I booked a family trip to Japan with a tour operator; here’s why I would do it again

24.07.2024 - 15:15 / thepointsguy.com

I'm an independent traveler who likes making my own arrangements. (Or, to rephrase that for the people who know me and will want me to tell you the truth: I'm a travel obsessive with a need to usually control every aspect of a trip.)

But when it came to planning my family's first trip to Japan, I decided I needed help connecting all the dots of what I wanted to see, do and eat (and to make sure my husband and son didn't want to abandon me by the end of it all).

I decided to work with a Japan travel specialist to assist with the planning, and it's a decision I'm glad I made. Here's what you need to know if you want to enlist a tour operator to help plan your own trip to Japan.

It was January 2020 when my son, Aidan, then 16, found out he had qualified for a much-coveted Rotary exchange program to Japan for the summer. It was April 2020 when that plan came crashing to a pandemic-related halt. He was crushed that he would not get to travel there, but as I (and hipsters everywhere) tried my hand at perfecting a sourdough recipe in the privacy of my own kitchen, Aidan dutifully kept his eye on getting to Japan one day.

He taught himself to speak and read Japanese (first with a 365-day streak on Duolingo, then with an online tutor). He dove into cooking Japanese cuisine, directing us to local Asian markets to procure ingredients for new-to-us-at-the-time dishes like okonomiyaki (savory pancakes from Osaka).

But despite his deep dive into Japanese culture, by the time the country reopened its borders and the exchange program came back online, he couldn't participate. He had aged out.

That's when I decided to try to put together a trip to Japan for our whole family.

The only issue: I had no idea where to start. I've traveled extensively in Africa and have visited a half-dozen Asian countries on my own. But there was something I found inherently intimidating about planning a trip to Japan. The language with multiple alphabets, the complex train schedules, the reservations needed months in advance for everything from restaurants to attractions — it all kept me in a planning procrastination holding pattern.

That's when I started to consider getting some professional planning assistance. On a recent trip to Namibia, I connected with Audley Travel, a tour operator with offices in London and Boston, which coordinated the transportation hurdles of that journey to one of the earth's most remote corners.

When I decided to get help with our trip to Japan so it would be as special as possible for Aidan, I connected with Audley. I especially liked that its travel specialists have lived, or traveled extensively, in the destinations where they operate and know it well (as opposed to travel agents who can sell any number of