This page lays out the actual numbers: what the prices include and exclude, which airlines fly from SEA and when they leave, how Seattle's April spring break really lines up with cherry blossoms (less neatly than you'd hope, but fixably), and which museums sell out a month or more ahead. It also answers the question you've already asked yourself if you've seen a "$1,839, airfare included" bus tour advertised: what does the other five thousand dollars buy?
One more thing before the numbers. Seattle and Kobe have been sister cities since 1957, among the oldest pairings between U.S. and Japanese cities. This corner of the country has been aimed at Japan for three generations, and it shows in the flights, the coffee, and the travelers.
Key Takeaways
The nonstop from SEA to Tokyo takes about 10 hours 15 minutes to 10 hours 50 minutes, flown daily by Delta, ANA, JAL, and Alaska. It is one of the shortest routes to Tokyo from anywhere in the contiguous U.S.
Private Japan tours from Seattle run 5,799 to 8,185 per person, land only, double occupancy. Round-trip economy airfare from SEA typically adds roughly $1,200–1,600.
Seattle's mid-April spring break arrives after peak cherry blossom in Tokyo and Kyoto. The right spring-break play is late-blooming sakura in Hirosaki, Kakunodate, or Kanazawa.
Timed-entry tickets (Chichu Art Museum, Ghibli, teamLab) sell out weeks to months ahead. On a UME tour, your consultant books and tracks every one of them.
Since the October 2023 JR Pass price increase to ¥50,000 for 7 days, the pass rarely pays off on private itineraries. A driver-guide plus one or two train legs usually wins.
Start Where You Care Most
What a Japan Trip from Seattle Actually Costs
Every one of our Japan tours from Seattle is quoted the same way, so it's worth spelling out what the numbers mean before you compare them to anything else. "From $7,385" means per person, based on two people sharing a room, and covering the 12-day trip on the ground in Japan. International airfare is separate.
That second sentence is where most comparison shopping goes wrong. A package advertised at "$1,839 including airfare" and a land-only private tour starting at $5,799 are not the same product measured in different units; they are different products. Here is the full picture.
What the tour price includes:
All accommodation for the itinerary, hand-picked for location and character
A private, English-speaking guide and driver on touring days, for your group only
Ground transportation: private vehicle, plus reserved shinkansen seats where trains are the better tool
Daily breakfast, plus the meals listed in your itinerary
Admission and timed-entry tickets for everything on the itinerary, booked by us
Itinerary design and revisions before departure, plus 24/7 support during the trip
What it doesn't include:
International airfare to and from Japan
Travel insurance
Most lunches and dinners, so you can eat what looks good rather than what's included
Personal spending: shopping, laundry, extra activities you add on the day
Visa fees (none required for U.S. passport holders on tourist stays up to 90 days)
On airfare: round-trip economy from SEA to Tokyo typically runs about $1,200–1,600, with sales dipping lower in the soft months and prices climbing steeply around cherry blossom season and the December holidays. Your consultant can include flights in the booking or leave them to you and your miles; either way, we'll tell you the current fare picture before you decide.
Flights from Seattle to Japan: Airlines, Airports, and a Time Change in Your Favor
All Japan tours from Seattle begin with the same ten and a half hours in the air, and it's worth understanding them, because this stretch of ocean is where Seattle has a real advantage over nearly every other U.S. city.
Four airlines fly Seattle–Tokyo nonstop:
Airline | Route | Typical departure (SEA local) | Flight time |
Delta | SEA → Haneda (HND) | Late morning, around 11:30 a.m.–noon | ~10h40 |
ANA | SEA → Haneda (HND) | Late afternoon, around 4:30 p.m. | ~10h30 |
JAL | SEA → Narita (NRT) | Early afternoon, around 1:15 p.m. | ~10h15 |
Alaska | SEA → Narita (NRT) | Early afternoon, around 1:20 p.m. | ~10h40 |
Schedules shift with the seasons, so treat these as the shape of the day rather than a promise, but the shape matters: this is a daytime route. You board around midday, fly through what is, for your body, the afternoon and evening, and land in Tokyo the next afternoon, in daylight, at a civilized hour.
One caveat that only applies to a handful of U.S. cities, including this one. Seattle has roughly four nonstops a day to Tokyo. Los Angeles has a dozen or more. That scarcity means three things for you: fares don't need to discount hard to fill planes, award space is thin, and a family of five should not assume five seats together will still exist two months out. Book the flights early, even if the rest of the itinerary is still taking shape.
Haneda or Narita?
Tokyo has two airports, and the difference is bigger than the name suggests. Haneda sits about 25–30 minutes from central Tokyo by monorail or train. Narita is 60–90 minutes out, depending on where you're staying and how you're getting there. For a couple with backpacks, either works. For a multigenerational group landing after ten hours in an aluminum tube, Haneda's shorter transfer is the difference between arriving at the hotel at 5 p.m. and arriving at 6:45 p.m., which is the difference between dinner and collapse. When the fares are close, we steer families to Haneda and absorb the difference in the itinerary's first evening.
Eastside families (Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland) have the reverse calculation on the front end: I-405 to SEA runs 20–35 minutes depending on the hour, and an afternoon international departure means leaving home after lunch rather than fighting the morning merge.
The Jet Lag Math That Favors the West Coast
Tokyo runs 16 hours ahead of Seattle, 17 in winter. That number looks punishing until you check the direction you're flying. Going west, you're effectively traveling backward through the clock, and your body handles "the day got longer" far better than "the day vanished."
The play for the noon Delta departure: sleep 2–3 hours on the plane, no more, then land at Haneda around 2:30 p.m. feeling like it's about 11 p.m. the previous day, which is late but survivable. Check in, walk the neighborhood, eat an early bowl of noodles, lights out by 9:30 p.m. You will sleep like a felled tree, and when you wake up, it's morning in Tokyo and your body has, give or take, already reset. Most of our Seattle travelers report being fully on local time by day two or three. Compare that with the East Coast pattern (late-night departures, evening arrivals, days of dragging) and you can see why we call this the forgiving direction.
For grandparents and young kids, we soften it further: nothing scheduled before 10 a.m. on day one, an easy half-day, and a real bed before 9 p.m. The first 24 hours of your itinerary is written with the flight in mind, not against it.
Check your flight plan →
Nine Days or Fourteen: Which Tour Length Is Right
Most Japan tours from Seattle fall into three lengths, and the choice is less about budget than about what your calendar and your travelers can absorb. The flight costs you one day each way, so a "9-day" tour is about 7 days on the ground, and a 14-day tour is about 12.
| 9 days | 12 days | 14 days |
Days on the ground | ~7 | ~10 | ~12 |
Starting price | $5,880 | $7,345 | $7,221 |
Best for | First visit, tighter PTO | The sweet spot | Deep or slow travel |
Typical shape | Tokyo, Hakone/Fuji, Kyoto, Nara | Adds the Alps or the west | Multi-region, or one region deeply |
Pace | Brisk but doable | Comfortable | Unhurried, elder-friendly |
Three rules of thumb we've settled on after planning this route for years:
First trip, no constraints: go 10–12 days. Nine days works, but you'll leave wanting more, and the marginal cost of adding days is lower than the cost of a second trip.
Traveling with seniors: add buffer days, not attractions. A 12-day itinerary with three unscheduled afternoons serves a 70-year-old better than a 9-day one with none. The extra days are rest, not itinerary.
Second trip: go deep, not wide. A 14-day west-Japan loop through Shikoku and the Kumano Kodo rewards return visitors far more than a faster version of the classic route.
Tell us your dates and we'll map the trade-offs →
Four Routes That Work Well for Seattle Travelers
Geography shapes itineraries. From SEA, most trips start at Tokyo and the question is what you do with the middle. These four shapes cover about 90% of what we plan.
1. The Classic First-Timer Arc: Tokyo, Hakone or Fuji, Kyoto, Nara (9–10 days)
Arrive Haneda, spend three nights in Tokyo, one in the hot spring town of Hakone or the Fuji Five Lakes, three in Kyoto with a Nara day trip, and fly home from Osaka's Kansai airport so you're never backtracking. It's popular because it works. For tech-industry travelers, Tokyo also holds the two most reliably astonishing hours in Japan, the teamLab museums, whose timed-entry system is your consultant's problem, not yours.
2. The Alps and Old Post Towns: Fuji, Tateyama Kurobe, Takayama, Kanazawa, Kyoto (12 days)
The route behind our Alpine Wonders package. You cross the Japanese Alps through the Tateyama Kurobe alpine route (open roughly mid-April through late November; the snow corridor walls are at their tallest right when Seattle's spring break falls, which is a nice coincidence), then descend into the preserved Edo-period post towns of Takayama and the merchant houses of Kanazawa before finishing in Kyoto. This is the shape we recommend most for first trips longer than nine days.
3. The Deep West Loop: Ise, Kumano Kodo, Koyasan, the Seto Inland Sea, Shikoku (14 days)
Our soul route. You leave Tokyo on the shinkansen, walk a section of the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trail, spend a night in a Buddhist temple on Mount Koya, ferry across to the art islands of Naoshima and Teshima, and loop through Shikoku before flying home from Osaka. The Naoshima museums run on strict timed entry (details in the booking timeline below), which keeps most independent travelers from ever quite getting around to this route. That is a large part of its charm.
4. The Late-Sakura North Run: Kakunodate, Hirosaki, Kanazawa (10–11 days, April)
The spring-break route, and the answer to the calendar problem we'll get to in the next section. When Tokyo's blossoms are done, Japan's north is just starting: the samurai district of Kakunodate has some of the country's most famous weeping cherries, Hirosaki's castle park holds more than two thousand trees, and Kanazawa's Kenrokuen garden is arguably better in late bloom, with petals on the water, than at peak. From Seattle this is a well-kept secret hiding in plain sight, because mid-April is exactly when this route peaks.
Difficulty Notes for the REI Crowd
Seattle has the highest outdoor participation rate of any large U.S. metro, and our itineraries reflect it. Ratings in local terms:
Nakasendo walk, Magome to Tsumago (insertable into any central-Honshu route): about 5 miles of old paved post road over two passes. Think Snoqualmie Valley rail-trail difficulty with stairs and a hill in the middle. Best April–May and October–November.
Shimanami Kaido cycling (in the Seto Sea route): pick your distance, because the islands are linked by bridges with dedicated cycle lanes and you can bail at any of them. The full 40-plus-mile run is a genuine day; the shorter hops ride like the Burke-Gilman with a sea view. Rentals, including e-bikes, are at both ends.
Kumano Kodo, Nakahechi section: a real hike, wet, rooty, and occasionally steep, closer to Tiger Mountain conditioning than anything rail-trail. We book luggage transfer so you walk with a daypack.
Daylight, November–March: the mountains of central Japan lose light by 4:30–5:00 p.m., and "overcast with rain moving in" is as familiar here as it is at home. We front-load winter hiking mornings and keep the afternoons for onsen towns, which is what the weather is for.
When to Go to Japan: A 12-Month View from Seattle
Month | What Japan is doing | The note that matters to you |
Jan | Cold, dry, sunny; best Mt. Fuji visibility of the year | Uncrowded, cheap, and the skiing is excellent |
Feb | Sapporo Snow Festival (early Feb); peak powder in Hokkaido | See the winter break note below |
Mar | Plum blossom early, cherry blossom begins late month | Peak crowds start building the last week |
Apr | Full cherry bloom Tokyo/Kyoto in the first days; late bloom in the north mid-month | See the spring break section directly below |
May | Fresh green maples; Golden Week (late Apr–early May) domestic travel | Avoid Golden Week; early May after it is lovely |
Jun | Rainy season (tsuyu) moves up the archipelago mid-month | Soft prices, hydrangeas, and fewer people |
Jul | Hot and humid; Fuji climbing season opens early in the month | The trade for humidity is festival season |
Aug | Hottest; Obon (mid-Aug) domestic travel; fireworks everywhere | Tokyo's heat is real; Hokkaido is the escape |
Sep | Typhoon risk peaks; quieter once it passes | The most underrated month, with conditions |
Oct | Crisp and clear; foliage starts in the mountains | Our favorite month for first-timers |
Nov | Peak foliage in Kyoto and Tokyo mid-to-late month | Book 6+ months out; this is peak season |
Dec | Dry, clear, illuminations | See the New Year warning below |
The Spring Break Problem, Solved Honestly
Seattle Public Schools' spring break falls in mid-April (April 12–16 for the 2026–27 year, per the district's published calendar; always confirm the current year). Tokyo and Kyoto's cherry blossoms peak, in a typical year, in the last week of March and the first week of April. That means the default assumption of every Seattle family, that spring break and sakura line up, is usually wrong for the classic cities, and a generic travel site that tells you otherwise is selling you a schedule that misses.
What actually lines up with mid-April is the late bloom: Hirosaki and Kakunodate in the Tohoku north (often peaking mid-to-late April), and Kanazawa and the higher elevations of the Japanese Alps shortly after. The Late-Sakura North Run above was built for exactly this calendar. Petals on the ground in Kanazawa's Kenrokuen are not a consolation prize; many Japanese travelers consider the falling-sakura week the more beautiful one.
If you don't have school-calendar constraints, the answer inverts: travel the last week of March into the first days of April, at peak bloom, accepting peak crowds and peak pricing, or go two weeks later into May's fresh green and relative quiet.
Winter, With Two Warnings
Mid-December through early January. Japan's year-end holidays (roughly December 29–January 3) mean closed restaurants, packed trains, and fully booked hotels as the whole country goes home for New Year. The illuminations are spectacular and the days around them are festive, but we won't plan a December trip that pretends this week doesn't exist.
February mid-winter break. Seattle's February break (the week of Presidents' Day) is prime powder season in Hokkaido, with lift-served snow that makes Crystal and Stevens regulars emotional. The one mismatch: Sapporo's Snow Festival runs in early February and typically ends before the break begins, so the break itself misses the festival's biggest crowds, which is arguably the better ski trip anyway. If the festival is the goal, we plan the trip a week or two earlier, school calendar permitting. Niseko, Rusutsu, and Furano all run deep, cold, and reliably white through February.
How Far in Advance to Plan (and What We Book for You)
Japan has quietly become one of the hardest countries in the world to book last-minute, because its best experiences now run on timed entry with distant on-sale dates. The timeline we work from:
6–5 months out: Lock the route and the hotels if you're traveling in cherry blossom season, foliage season, or Golden Week. Book SEA flights in this window too, for the supply reasons in the flight section.
About 2 months out: Naoshima's Chichu Art Museum, the Monet-in-a-concrete-cave shrine that anchors the Seto Inland Sea art islands, opens sales on the 5th of each month for the month after next. In high season the good slots go within days. The same sale calendar governs the other Benesse sites, and the island's museums close Mondays.
About 1 month out: The Ghibli Museum in Mitaka (which sells out on a fixed monthly on-sale day and does not forgive latecomers), and the omakase counters worth flying this far for.
2–4 weeks out: teamLab, Shibuya Sky, and similar timed-entry attractions in Tokyo.
You do not need to track any of this. Every dated item above, plus restaurant requests, luggage transfers, and the small seat reservations that Japan's systems require, is handled by your consultant and appears on your final itinerary with confirmation numbers attached. What we need from you is your dates and your must-dos; the standing-in-line-at-10 a.m.-Japan time part is our job.
Ask us to lock the tickets →
Getting Around Japan: Cars, Trains, and the JR Pass Question
The default on our tours is a private vehicle with a driver-guide. For most of our Seattle travelers, this is the single biggest quality-of-life difference between our trips and every alternative. Nobody hauls luggage up station stairs or across concourses. Grandparents board a van at the hotel door, not a train at rush hour. The day moves at your speed, with the guide answering questions in transit rather than leaving you to decode signage alone.
Trains where trains win. The shinkansen is the best train ride on earth and some legs (Tokyo to Kyoto, Osaka to Hiroshima) are better by rail than by road. We reserve seats in advance, including the special seats with luggage space that Japan requires for bags over 160 cm total dimensions. On train days your luggage doesn't always come with you; more on that in a moment.
Do you need a JR Pass? Usually, no, and the math is now public.
The national Japan Rail Pass was a famous bargain for decades. Then in October 2023 its price rose roughly 65–70%, and the current 7-day pass costs ¥50,000, about $330 and up depending on the yen. Against that: Tokyo to Kyoto, the country's most-traveled shinkansen leg, costs about ¥13,320 one-way. The pass breaks even somewhere around three long-distance legs inside its validity window, which describes a small minority of the itineraries we build, and it doesn't cover the private vehicles, subways, or the non-JR lines that half of interesting Japan runs on.
On a private tour the question mostly dissolves: your car covers the days when a car is the right tool, we buy point-to-point tickets for the two or three legs when a train is, and the total is almost always below the pass while being faster and door-to-door. If your route genuinely does require four long train legs in a week (a fast Golden Route plus Hiroshima and back, for instance), we'll tell you to buy the pass. It's not a secret; it's arithmetic.
The luggage trick that changes everything: takkyubin
Japan's overnight luggage forwarding service (takkyubin) moves suitcases hotel-to-hotel for roughly ¥2,000–3,000 per bag, arriving the next day. On our itineraries, which average a hotel change every two nights in the mountain and countryside stretches, this is transformative: your big bags go straight from Tokyo to the Kanazawa hotel while you ride the alpine route with a daypack, or ahead to Kyoto while you walk the Kumano Kodo. We arrange it in advance; you hand the bags to the front desk and stop thinking about them.
A Coffee Pilgrimage: From Pike Place to the Kissaten
This section exists because of where you live. Seattle takes coffee more seriously than any other American city, and Japan is the one place on earth that takes it more seriously still. The two cities' coffee cultures grew up as mirror images, and traveling between them is a homecoming of sorts.
Consider the timeline. Starbucks was founded in 1971 a block from Pike Place Market — the store on the market's cobbles came a few years later — and that origin story anchors every Seattle coffee conversation. By then, Tokyo's kissaten, the Jazz-age cafes that serve dark siphon coffee in glass cups on doilies, had already spent decades refining their amber brews. The kissaten's obsessive sourcing, its loyal regulars, its quiet disdain for haste: this is the culture Seattle's third wave reinvented without knowing it had been done. When Seattle baristas fly to Tokyo and walk into a 1960s kissaten in Jimbocho, the usual reaction is a long silence and then something like "oh, it's us."
Where we send coffee travelers:
Kiyosumi-Shirakawa, Tokyo. The city's roaster district, a fifteen-minute walk from the sumo stables, where a cluster of small producers set up around a beautiful Edo garden. A half-day here, moving between roasters and the garden, is one of the best mornings in Tokyo and contains not a single famous landmark.
% Arabica, Arashiyama, Kyoto. A world-famous espresso bar sitting directly on the Katsura River below the Togetsukyo bridge. Order at the window, take the cup to the rail, and understand why the queue exists. Paired with the bamboo grove at 8:30 a.m., before the crowds, it is the single best morning sequence in Kyoto.
A heritage kissaten, anywhere. Ginza and Jimbocho in Tokyo hold the classics: velvet chairs, cream soda, thick toast, and pour-overs that take ten unhurried minutes. This is the counter-argument to specialty coffee, and you cannot understand Japan's coffee culture without sitting in one for an hour.
All three exist as drop-in half-day modules we can slot into any itinerary, any route, any season. Tell us how you take your coffee and we'll take it from there.
Add a coffee morning to my itinerary →
Mt. Fuji vs Mt. Rainier: A Seattle Climber's Guide
If you've stood on Rainier's summit (14,411 feet, glaciated, roped, crevasse-rescue prerequisites), you have asked the question. So here is the plain answer about Fuji (12,388 feet).
Fuji is not a technical climb. It is a long, high hike with a view problem. The official season runs from early July to early September; outside it, the huts, buses, and most of the safety net close, and the mountain collects weather. In season, the standard Yoshida route starts at the 5th Station roadhead around 7,500 feet and grinds up volcanic scree for 5–6 hours to hut accommodations near the summit, followed by a 2 a.m. wake-up, a final hour in the dark, and sunrise (goraiko) above the clouds. Descending the loose switchbacks is its own quad-burning penance. Guides are not required, crampons only occasionally, and the real hazards are altitude you can't see coming (you gain it fast, without the acclimatization days Rainier programs demand) and weather that turns without an invitation.
The Rainier comparison, in plain terms: Rainier is the harder, more dangerous mountain by every technical measure. Fuji is harder to enjoy: no glaciers, no roped teams, just altitude, scree, crowds in July and August, and a hut bunk you'll book months ahead. Climbers who've done both tend to say the same thing: Fuji is a pilgrimage, Rainier is a mountaineering objective, and the pilgrimage is worth doing precisely once.
On a private tour we support a Fuji summit the way we support everything else: a flexible weather window in the itinerary rather than a single pinned date, hut reservations handled early (they sell out for August weekends by spring), transfers to the 5th Station, a guide if you want one, and a hot spring booked for the day after, which your legs will vote for unanimously. For travelers who want the mountain without the scree, the Fuji Five Lakes and Hakone deliver the classic view; just go in with PNW-appropriate expectations, because Fuji hides in cloud a large fraction of the year, and anyone who's waited three weekends for Rainier to emerge knows exactly the landlord they're dealing with.
Ask about adding a Fuji climb →
Why Book Japan Tours from Seattle with UME
A private trip is a $7,000-plus prepaid purchase across the Pacific, so before the sales pitch, the plain answers to the questions we'd ask in your position.
You'd be paying UME, in writing, before anything is charged.
Your itinerary, hotels, inclusions, and total price are confirmed in a written proposal before a deposit moves; final payments follow confirmed bookings, not promises. Money goes to UME Travel, not to an opaque overseas subcontractor, and your consultant's name is on the emails the whole way through.
One consultant, start to finish, plus a team on the ground.
You get a named planner from the first conversation through the farewell dinner, English-speaking local guides in Japan, and a 24/7 support line that rings a human being if a typhoon reroutes your trip at midnight. The things that fail on Japan trips are almost never sights; they're missed connections, closed museums, and pharmacy runs, and the fix for all three is someone answering the phone.
The deadline-driven parts are our job.
Chichu, Ghibli, teamLab, the Nozomi seat with luggage space, the 8 p.m. counter in a Kanazawa alley: every dated and limited item on your itinerary is booked and tracked by us, with confirmations in your final documents.
We plan around Seattle's realities.
Your consultant knows what a mid-April spring break actually means for sakura, what a noon Delta departure does to day one, and what "a short walk" means to a group that includes a 78-year-old. On multigenerational trips we plan elder pacing deliberately: half-day sightseeing with afternoons off, elevators over stairs, hotels chosen for Western bedding when knees prefer it, and a realistic onsen strategy. One note we make a point of raising early: Medicare generally does not pay for medical care in Japan, so we ask every traveler to carry trip insurance that includes medical evacuation, and we'll help you sort out what level of cover fits your group.
Meet a few of the people who'd plan your trip.
Monica builds our art and design-heavy itineraries and knows the Naoshima booking calendar like a Seattleite knows the forecast. Steven specializes in compressed schedules, for travelers with three weeks of PTO and non-negotiable ambitions. Carrie is our school-calendar planner, the one to talk to about April breaks, February ski weeks, and children whose vote counts. Dan is our generalist, and the person we hand the trips that refuse to fit a category. Tell us about your group and we'll match you to the right planner from the start.
The comparison with alternatives, in plain terms: a group bus operator can fill a coach for less than a quarter of our price, and if that's the product you want, the ads are easy to find. The global luxury brands will sell you a Japan trip alongside fifty other destinations, at a brand premium, on their calendar. What we do is narrower: Japan only, private only, on your dates, with the booking labor included, and with every number shown before you commit.
Talk to a Japan specialist →
About 10 hours 15 minutes to 10 hours 50 minutes nonstop, depending on airline and destination airport. Delta and ANA fly to Haneda; JAL and Alaska fly to Narita. All four depart in the early afternoon or late morning and land the following afternoon.
Haneda, when fares are close: it's 25–30 minutes from central Tokyo versus 60–90 for Narita, a difference that matters most with tired children or seniors in tow. Narita is a fine airport with excellent express trains to the city; it just costs you an extra hour at the end of a long day.
In Tokyo and Kyoto, usually yes: peak bloom there is late March to early April, and Seattle's mid-April break typically arrives just after. The fix is geographic, not calendar-based. Late-blooming sakura in Hirosaki, Kakunodate, and Kanazawa peak in mid-to-late April, and we build spring-break trips around that timing. See the spring break section for the full picture.
Usually not on our trips. Since the October 2023 price increase, the 7-day pass costs ¥50,000 (about $330), and it breaks even only with roughly three or more long-distance train legs inside the validity window. Private touring replaces most of those legs with a car and driver, and we buy point-to-point tickets for the rest.
Yes, with the right itinerary, and this is a core reason families come to us. Noon departures and next-afternoon arrivals make the flight easier from Seattle than from almost anywhere in the U.S., and we pace elder trips with free afternoons, elevator-accessible routing, Western-style bedding where preferred, and luggage forwarding so nobody hauls a suitcase up a station staircase. On insurance: Medicare generally doesn't cover treatment in Japan, so we require a policy that includes medical coverage and evacuation.
For spring or autumn travel: 6+ months, primarily because of hotels and the SEA flight supply (roughly four nonstops a day to Tokyo). Timed-entry attractions come due at 1–2 months out regardless; we track all of those deadlines for you.
The short version of everything above: you're starting from one of the best-positioned cities in America for this trip. Ten and a half hours nonstop, a time change in the friendly direction, a spring break that points you toward late snow country if you plan for it, and a coffee culture that will recognize you on arrival. The parts that are hard about Japan, the ticket deadlines, the pacing, the rail pass arithmetic, the tattoo-friendly baths, are the parts we do.
Tell us who's traveling and what you want out of the trip, and a planner who knows both ends of this route will come back with a first draft.
