Discover Japan Reviews

4.8 Rating 24 Reviews

About smarTours:

smarTours is a leading provider of direct-to-consumer, affordable travel experiences to exotic global destinations. The Company offers travelers curated, pre-packaged itineraries to over 50 destinations across the globe. By offering tours directly to consumers, the Company provides premium-quality experiences at value prices, and as a result, has cultivated a highly passionate and loyal community of repeat travelers. More than 200,000 travelers have taken a smarTours trip since the founding of the Company in 1996. smarTours is… the smarter way to see the world.

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Phone:

800-337-7773

Email:

info@smartours.com

Location:

500 7TH AVE, 8TH FL,
NEW YORK
New York
10018

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“This was my first tour to Japan with Smartours. It was great experience from start to finish. The tour guide ‘Hero’ was very knowledgeable, humorous and kind. In our spare time she would voluntarily suggest places and go with us and give little history about it too! We went on April 10-21, 2017. Weather was awesome and cherry blossoms were stunning. All the hotels were great too! Being vegetarian they made sure I had enough of it. I would definitely travel with this company again and recommend to my friends. The big plus was the flight was from LAX!!”

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Posted 3 years ago

Hello Mayuri, We appreciate your kind words about our tour, and we're happy that the cherry blossoms were in bloom during your visit! We're glad that you enjoyed your vegetarian meals and that Hero made sure you had a lovely experience in Japan. We hope to see you again soon! The smarTours Team

Posted 2 years ago

“This was my first tour with Smartour. April 10-21, 2017 perfect season for cherry blossoms. So pleased with the tour and the tour guide was awesome. Her name is Hero. She was very knowledgeable and kind hearted. She took very good care of everyone. She managed to arrange vegetarian food for me everywhere we went. All the hotels were great. Great value for money. Great experience and definitely will do more tours with Smartour.”

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Posted 4 years ago

Hello Mayuri, We're so thrilled you enjoyed your first trip with us and that the cherry blossoms were in bloom during your visit. We hope you'll join us on another tour soon! The smarTours Team

Posted 2 years ago

“All the hotels were very good. The guide Yoko was excellent. She went out of the way to make us all comfortable.”

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Posted 4 years ago

“Our tour director, May was outstanding. My pre- conceived ideas about her country of Japan were totally reversed with succinct, informative illustrations brought to life by our incredible tour !!”

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Posted 5 years ago

“This is our 4 th trip with Smartours and have always been delighted by the experiences and by our tour guides. This trip to Japan was no exception. Kudos to Smartours for putting together such excellent itineraries, lodgings, transports and guides.”

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Posted 5 years ago

“The excursion to Nara tour company needs to have head sets. Huge crowds made listening very difficult to hear our very knowledgable guide. The tour was very rushed - -left quite late (maybe waited for some "no-shows"?), left Nara in the dark. We needed more time!! Suggest not scheduling the Nara trips against the same time for the excursion to Hiroshima. Then we could do both. I have more photos I would be willing to share is request. Did the image post here? Can't tell. Julie Kirby You replied that you would like me to send more photos. Sending one at a time, is not a solution here, Your reply, was a "no reply" address. Please send me and email address where I can send more Japan trip photos. Thanks, Julie Kirby”

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Posted 5 years ago

“Good overview of Japan with many great stops (Kanazawa, Takayama). Our tour was a little on the large side with 38 people. The hotels were fine - some great, some good enough. Overall it was a very worthwhile experience.”

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Posted 5 years ago

“It is 2 weeks ago that we returned from our "Discover Japan" tour. What a great enjoyment it was, and how lucky we were! We managed to experience the cherry blossoms (Sakurai) in all the towns on the agenda. Even our guide, graceful Yoshimi Ozawa, was amazed about our great luck and exclaimed that two weeks before there was nothing to see. To add to our enjoyment, we were able to see Mount Fuji's upper cone above the clouds. Yoshi (as she wanted to be called by us) was extremely well organized and very eager to share her extensive knowledge of Japans history, customs and living conditions with us. We were duly impressed by the cleanliness of the cities, streets and people. Especially the rail road stations in Tokyo, Kanazawa and Kyoto are far and above in architecture and organization over any that we seen in Europe (let alone here in the US). The visit to the Mitsukushi department store was eye opening. The quality and quantity of the products on offer exceeded anything here in the US. Even more so were the the great number of sales clerks available to help, but not at all "pushy". The hotels were very good and the breakfasts quite sufficient. The included meals were also good. Our concerns of having to spend extensively for meals were unfounded since there were a great variety of lower costs options. Just the long and congested breakfast lines at the New Otani Hotel dimmed the outlook for the day. Having to wait up to 40 minutes, even though there were empty tables, should not be an acceptable condition. Transportation in general , be it by bus or train, was very good. However, We did not understand why the suitcases were moved from Takayama directly to Kyoto, depriving us of them in Kanazawa. We came away from this journey admiring the Japanese people that went through such dramatic changes since the middle of the last century.”

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Posted 7 years ago