Japan Uncovered – Review : Departure 29 March 2025
This was my third group tour with Wendy Wu. I’ve previously travelled to Vietnam and India and had an excellent experience in all respects both times which is why I came back for a group tour to Japan. I have dipped into various Japanese cities briefly a few times as ports on cruises. I liked what I saw and wanted to come back for a more in depth experience which is why I booked the trip for its comprehensive and varied looking itinerary.
1) I used Wendy Wu to book my international flights and upgraded to Premium Economy. The airline used was ANA which I found to be prompt and punctual on all flights. I flew to Tokyo Haneda then an internal flight to Osaka. My only niggle is that the timing of the flights meant I got to the hotel at 11.30pm well after every other member of the group so missed all the usual introductions and hellos. The flight home from Tokyo was excellent as I had a free seat next to me and effectively had the space and leg room that the business class seats had to myself. Pick up and drop off at airport was very good by luxury minivan ... as I was last to arrive and one of first to depart. Generally the rest of the group were just given tickets to the general airport bus ...not good and smacks of penny pinching.
2) Overall I found the tour to be good in terms of content and the itinerary – a balance mix of big cities and smaller areas. Id give it 1 3.5/5 overall - it would have be 4/5 but the Tokyo experience brought it down for me. There were however a few niggles which did impact my overall experience which I’ll come to shortly.
3) Group size of 26 – mixture of UK and Aussies/NZ. The UK numbers bigger than Aussies this time. A very pleasant group to travel with, however I think I would have preferred a smaller group of 15-20 as many of the areas visited were very crowded which can make it difficult at times. We had earphone/receivers but the sound was often very crackly.
4) I don’t think Level 1 is at all accurate for this tour – there are very many steps and inclines at a lot of the sites visited and also there are times where you're walking 10 mins from car parks to the entrance of a site and then walking even more. The pace felt quite relentless in the first 5 days and the bottoms of my feet felt very sore for a few days – sticking them in an ice bucket every night helped! Level 2 is probably more accurate. The pace slacked off a little as the tour progressed which was a relief! It is after all a holiday not a Boot Camp march. I walked around 85 km in total over the whole tour and didnt do some areas so the total walking if you did everything was in excess of that.
5) Guide Chiyomi (Chi) Nakata was excellent throughout – enthusiastic, friendly, informative and well organised. Guiding 26 people around often very crowded areas with no hiccups and no losses is no mean feat! She did a great job.
Drivers – all excellent safe drivers.
6) Hotels – generally of a decent quality and location but I had issues with 2 of them. Hotel Kanazawa in Kanazawa … my room was clean but felt dingy and depressing. The pillows were heavy and uncomfortable ..no idea what the filling was but I don’t think feathers or hollowfibre!.. the AC didn’t work meaning I had to open the window and keep it open all night ..very noisy since hotel was opposite the rail station.. and then there was the high step to the bathroom which I tripped on twice. It felt like being in a very basic student study bedroom. The initial response I got from Wendy Wu on this was that they were surprised as "never had negative feedback" on it before ..I don’t believe that one ..and that a team member had stayed recently and found it “basic but comfortable”. Well given that Wendy Wu is a big source of ££ to the hotel I suspect the room they had was far better than my cell.
The hotel in Tokyo was extremely disappointing. The hotel itself .. optimistically named “Sunshine Prince” is old, dated and in real need of a refurb immediately. The beds are rock hard, the décor is Travelodge 80’s era with scuffed walls and carpets and the AC barely functions – fortunately it wasn’t that warm in Tokyo, 20C tops - and then another high step to the bathroom. The lifts were extremely slow at all times other than early morning or late night. The location – for me – was terrible. The only positive I can think of is the convenience store on the ground floor. We were in Ikebukuro area which was quite a distance to the north of the city centre areas like Shibuya or Shinjuka. To get to the centre took around 40mins by bus or cab and similar on subway .. and subway can be very confusing if youre not used to it .. many lines, many exits and yes crowded. The only thing to wander around was the attached shopping centre. It felt a bit like booking a weekend in London and anticipating a West end hotel but actually finding out you're in Borehamwood. I much prefer a central location as that gives me the ability to wander round the surrounding area and get to attractions faster – couldn’t do that at this hotel which I have to say very negatively affected my stay in Tokyo. I’ve previously stayed closer to Shinjuka on previous pre-cruise nights and this was a much better experience. The tours in Tokyo were essentially all places I’ve seen before so I would have preferred the option to explore independently. The tours were practically identical to tours I've done from a cruise ship. Friends on another Wendy Wu Tour a week ahead of mine said that their Tokyo hotel was very good and much closer to downtown. I paid a LOT of money for this trip – no2 in my all time spending behind Antarctica .. where I got incredible bang for my buck.. - and with this Tokyo hotel I honestly felt ripped off, annoyed and feel that a big chunk of my time in the city was wasted and I seriously question why Wendy Wu uses this hotel... well I can guess ... ££ .. Wendy Wu dropped the ball big time here – why shoot yourself in the foot like that? If there was the option of cutting short stay here and heading home early I would have honestly done so.
7) Food – The Japanese food was consistently good but it did get quite repetitive after a while with a lot of it being bento and hotpot cook it yourself style. Western style was ok. On some occasions if I didn’t eat all the bits in the bento – eg cold veg isn’t my thing and neither is the slippery jelly kinds of tofu - I was hungry again only a few short hours later and searching for a convenience store. Quality of hotel breakfasts a bit hit n miss, luke warm always. Some restaurants for lunches better than others – the Italian restaurant in Tokyo for example where we were shoved into a corner near the entrance on high stools in the bar area where the actual restaurant itself … which you walked through enroute to the toilet was nice, spacious and NOT full. The food was OK but essentially looked like a plate of "everything on the menu". I would have liked more variety like simple but filling bowls of ramen or udon, some gyoza, teppanyaki, yakisoba etc. I'm certainly not convinced we had the best experience Japan had to offer food wise. Don’t think I’ll ever knowingly touch tofu again. Maybe an obvious thing to say here but if you dont like Japanese food that much then you probably will struggle.
8) Other. As to be expected there was lots of Shrines, Temples, Castles and Gardens... which do kind of blur into one after a while. There were some cultural bits such as Tea ceremony, Miso brewery, Sake brewery, paper making and a brief walk round a wasabi farm but they all felt very brief I would have preferred more like maybe how to do bonsai, meeting a local family, meeting Geisha and Maiko, making gold leaf, sushi making, Kabuki, Sumo or food tour round local food markets.
9) Overall – good varied itinerary, an excellent guide, very pleasant group of travellers but given the points raised above I cannot honestly say this represented good value for money and this is very different to my previous view of the Wendy Wu trips I’ve taken before where all aspects were completely outstanding. Knowing what I now know I'd advise a shorter trip and dont necessarily feel you have to go to Japan at the - most expensive - and busiest time of Cherry Blossom. You may well enjoy it more when its less crowded.
