Tokyo
Day 1
Met at Haneda and driven to Ebisu, and then left alone. The Westin sits across from Yebisu Garden Place, which is one of the most walkable corners of the city, and the evening is best spent on foot in it. Nothing was booked for dinner. They were given three places within a few minutes of the lobby and told to pick one once they had landed and seen how they felt.
Day 2
Shinjuku Gyoen at opening, when it is at its best and its quietest. The 3D cat on the billboard at Shinjuku, then the architecture and boutiques along Omotesando. Ramen for lunch, an animal cafe in Harajuku in the afternoon, and teamLab Planets, where the art is the room and you walk through it barefoot. Dinner at Kintan.
Day 3
Senso-ji and Nakamise, which has been selling to pilgrims on that street for three centuries. A tea ceremony, then sushi made with their own hands. Up the Skytree in the afternoon and back down to Kappabashi, the street where Tokyo's restaurants buy their knives.
Day 4
Meiji Jingu first, through the forest before the day builds around it. Shibuya and the Miyashita Park rooftop, then the crossing from street level. Tsukiji outer market late morning. A long afternoon in Ginza: Ginza Six, the Nissan showroom, the vintage designer shops, and Loft. Omakase at Sushi Kenshin in Ebisu, a few minutes from their door.
Day 5
The coast at Kamakura, which ran the country in the twelfth century and has never quite stopped looking the part. Tsurugaoka Hachimangu at the head of the town and Komachi Street falling away from it. The Great Buddha, seated in the open air since 1252 after a tsunami took the hall around him. Lunch on Enoshima, the escalator up the island, and the observatory at the top. Pizza in the evening, because sixteen days is long enough that not every dinner needs to be Japanese.
Mt. Fuji and Hakone
Day 6
An early departure, and this is the one place where the calendar dictated the clock. It was the first day of Obon, the week the country travels, and leaving Tokyo early put them clear of it with the morning light still on the mountain. Asama Shrine, then Oishi Park on the north shore of Lake Kawaguchi for the view every photograph of Fuji is trying to be. Oshino Hakkai in the afternoon, spring-fed and clear. Into Gora Kadan with the onsen and the evening ahead of them, and dinner at the ryokan.
Day 7
The Hakone Open-Air Museum, which sets sculpture against the mountains and does it better than almost anywhere. Across Lake Ashi by boat, lunch near Moto-Hakone, and the bullet train from Odawara. Our own driver-guide had been with them from the moment they landed. In Kyoto they were welcomed by a local driver-guide from our network, who carried the same itinerary and the same standards, while our team in Tokyo remained a call away throughout. Met on the platform in Kyoto and taken to Dhawa Yura at the foot of Sanjo Ohashi, with Gion on one side and the river on the other. Dinner across the bridge in Pontocho, again unbooked, again three walkable options that all take walk-ins.
Kyoto and Nara
Day 8
West Kyoto, early. The bamboo grove at Arashiyama is a different place at half past eight than it is at noon. Tenryu-ji beside it holds one of the oldest surviving garden designs in Japan, laid out in the fourteenth century and never redrawn. Then Kinkaku-ji, and after lunch Sanjusangendo, a hall a hundred and twenty metres long with a thousand and one carved figures in it. Gion in the late afternoon.
Day 9
Fushimi Inari at half past eight, taking the lower gates while they are still yours. Then the middle of the day was handed back to them. Yasaka Jinja, the Kamo River, Pontocho and Nishiki are all a short walk from that hotel, so there was no reason for anyone to drive them anywhere, and Kyoto is better taken at your own speed regardless. The Kyoto driver-guide returned to collect them for Nijo Castle in the afternoon. Dinner at leisure.
Day 10
Kiyomizu-dera first thing, on its platform above the city and quiet at that hour. Coming down, Chawan-zaka as the pottery shops open their shutters. Then Nara, where the deer have had the run of the park since the eighth century and know it. Todai-ji, and Isuien, a garden built to borrow the temple roof and the hills behind it into its own composition. On to Osaka in the late afternoon.
Osaka
Day 11
Osaka does not do restraint and there is no point asking it to. The castle first, then Kuromon Ichiba, where most of the eating is done standing up. Shinsekai for the retro streets, the Umeda Sky Building for the view, Shinsaibashi for the shopping. The guide left them at the river cruise as the lights came on, and the walk back to the hotel took them through the best of the night.
Okinawa
Day 12
A transfer day and an easy one. Itami in the morning, Naha before lunch, and a private car up the west coast to Onna. Halekulani sits on one of the best stretches of sand in Japan. This is where the program stops being a program.
Day 13
Nothing scheduled.
Day 14
Nothing scheduled.
Back to Tokyo
Day 15
Down the coast to Naha and back to Tokyo for the last night, met again at Haneda. Dinner in the city.
Day 16
Luggage into the vehicle at check-out, where it stayed, so the last day was spent carrying nothing. Ginza, the depachika food halls, a slow lunch, and Haneda in good time.
How a program like this is built
A honeymoon needs an ending, not a finale. The country goes at the front and the last three days have nothing in them, because the alternative is two people getting on a fourteen-hour flight straight off a temple.
The guide is not the product. Where a hotel sits inside walking distance of the good part of the city, the middle of the day gets handed back. Dhawa Yura is on Sanjo Ohashi for exactly that reason.
Half the dinners get reserved, the ones worth building a day around. The rest are three names within a few minutes of the lobby, all of which take walk-ins.
Where the calendar forces the issue, we move the clock rather than the plan. Obon is a fact about Japan in August and the answer to it is a seven o'clock start, once or twice, not a different itinerary.
Luggage moves with the vehicle rather than ahead of it when the route allows, so nothing has to be tracked or waited for.
