Reviews

Well travelled, as I am, I expected a well run and pleasant journey through Japan on this 21 day tour. Seeing it's highlights and emersing myself into the Japanese culture. Unfortunately, having 5 couriers during the tour, one of whom read from prewritten notes, rather spoilt the idea of getting into the culture. The hotels were adequate, but for the money, rather a poor choice. The transport, as always in Japan, was very good.
The food was quite poor, and speaking to some Japanese friends who live in Tokyo, the dinning experiences, although varied, was of poor quality throughout.
The experiences on the tour were extremely rushed and there was little time to stand and stare.
I honestly could not recommend this tour.

The website was very informative and easy to navigate.The itinerary for the tour I booked is the best I’ve seen.

Adding more vouchers to reduce the cost of the trip.

We paid £22,000 (includes £2000 flight upgrade) for both of us. But the 20 Australians and 2 New Zealanders in our group had only paid half of that. The tour was completely overpriced. We had to carry all our suitcases to and from the coaches every day, although it did say that in your brochure. However, when we travelled by train we had to carry our overnight bags through the streets to walk to the train station and up and down hundreds of stairs and escalators. Sometimes. A lot of people in our group struggled. One of the worst things was the tour being graded as 1. Without doubt it was a grade 3. So many people on our group just could not cope with the miles of walking every day and up and down hundreds of stairs visiting temples and forts. It was absolutely ridiculous to have the tour graded as 1. Most of the food was horrendous, bento box after bento box. The food was usually on the table when we got there and there was no choice. Although my fish was always taken care of. We went to a restaurant for dinner once where we were able to choose our food. Apart from that we just ate whatever was in the box, occasionally we did go to restaurants where we cooked our own food, but again no choice. Overall the lack of choice of food was one of the worst things. Japan is renowned for good quality varied food and we didn’t see it.

Good Advice and all explained well.

This was an interesting tour that was well organised, with a good range of activities, opportunity to enjoy all sorts of Japanese food, using good hotels and with a very good guide. There are just a couple of things that stop me awarding it 5 stars

Excellent trip very well organised.
Would never have been able to cover so much in such a short time

An amazing and comprehensive itinerary - don’t think we could possibly have seen any more of Japan. So well organised and looked after by our guide Hannah (Haruko) who was so knowledgeable and went above and beyond what could have been expected to make sure we got the most out of our trip.

Some of the sites visited were extremely busy which is due to over tourism, not the fault of WendyWu. This may however be an opportunity for Wendywu to find some less visited sites in the country for a more off the beaten track experience (a more rural or seaside area added for a couple of nights would be great). The tour guide, Mari, was excellent and the trip went very smoothly, due to her great organisational skills and knowledge of the country. It was a full on tour and a little more free time might have been useful. In hind sight I think that a bit more time in the south/middle of the country would have been better with the trip finishing in Tokyo. Travelling up to Sapporo was a lot of time on the trains with only single nights in hotels (rather than 2 nights for most of the rest of the trip) and the weather was worse in the north with shorter days at this time of year. Overall, an excellent trip.

Tour guide Kumi was the best we've had - very knowledgeable with , helpful and professional - even helping members of the group with transport once the tour had finished. This is a very full on tour with lots of walking and traversing across the whole of Japan - some older members of the group struggled to keep up with the pace, so I would suggest this is upgraded to a 2 level in future. Lunch locations could have been closer to some of the sights, or even bento boxes being provided as a picnic, enabling longer visiting times at some sights, as we were restricted timewise at some castles such as Himeji Castle. Also, a dinner with a show option could be added to the itinerary, rather than just dinners each evening. I would also recommend changing the dinner start times to 7.30 pm, as 45 minutes to collect luggage, check into the hotel, shower, change and get out again on a repetitive basis is challenging.

I would give 4.5 if I could…….. I never give 5 as there is always room for improvement. I should, however, mention that our holiday was cut short due to an accident. The tour manager, Mina, was brilliant, she managed to produce wheelchairs as if by magic and also assisted us in finding a doctor who spoke English. I have already recommended you to friends who are looking to book a Vietnam tour with you.

I contacted Wendy Wu to ask about flight, all of which were answered to my satisfactionl. I therefore booked my trip there and then.

Helpful ,informative, polite very good

It is a very expensive holiday, but on the whole worth it. The all inclusive 3 meals a day caused quite a lot of wasted food as it became just a bit too much. I also felt a bit aggrieved for not being given the included breakfast on the day of departure. Admittedly it was early (6.45 am) but I thought the hotel could provide a small take-away croissant and a coffee.
Very much enjoyed the train journeys and the special evening meals and locations, a lot of variety. Very well organised itinerary, however, our guide was somewhat overwhelmed with looking after a group of 28 people and relied heavily on group members to help. For this size of group I thought she should have been given a Wendy Wu assistant. However, she did an excellent job and was always cheerful and helpful.

I phoned to book a holiday with Wendy Wu Tours. The person that I spoke to was helpful and well informed and was able to answer the queries that I had. The whole booking process was quick and easy.