Best of Japan

Four Cities, Ten Days

Japan works at two speeds simultaneously: the Shinkansen bullet train connecting cities in minutes, and the centuries-old rhythm of a tea ceremony where nothing happens quickly. Both are accurate portraits of the same country. This ten-day itinerary holds both of them — Tokyo's vertical energy, the mountain silence of Hakone, Kyoto's concentration of temples and tradition, and Osaka's food-first culture — connected by private transfers and a pace that allows each city to land properly.

October sits in the middle of Japan's autumn foliage season. The maple and ginkgo trees turn in sequence from north to south; in Kyoto, the temple gardens reach peak colour between mid and late October, and the Arashiyama bamboo grove takes on a particular quality of light in the cooler mornings. Timing this trip for October is deliberate.

Tokyo: Days 1–3

The Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Otemachi occupies the upper floors of a tower in the financial district, with views that take in the Imperial Palace gardens and, on clear mornings, the white cone of Mt. Fuji on the horizon. The hotel's bar Virtù consistently appears on Asia's 50 Best Bars lists and is the right place to acclimatise on arrival evening — high ceilings, serious cocktails, Tokyo spread out below.

Three days is enough to hold the city's major registers: Tsukiji Outer Market at first light for the best breakfast in Tokyo; the Meiji Shrine in Harajuku, a forested Shinto sanctuary that sits improbably inside the city's most fashionable district; Yanaka, the neighbourhood that survived the 1923 earthquake and wartime bombing and still reads like Edo-period Tokyo; and teamLab Borderless, the immersive digital art space in Azabudai Hills, which opened in its new location in 2024 and remains one of the more genuinely disorienting things you can do indoors anywhere in the world. A private sushi class with a chef — your own knives, your own fish, the chef watching your knife angle — is arranged for one evening and runs about two hours before becoming dinner.

Hakone: Day 4

The Odakyu Romance Car from Shinjuku Station to Hakone-Yumoto takes 85 minutes through escalating mountain scenery; the Hakone Tozan Railway continues up through switchbacks to the town of Gora, where Gōra Kadan sits on the grounds of the former summer villa of a member of the Imperial Family.

The ryokan holds fewer than 40 rooms, each facing either a private garden or the forested slopes of Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. Rooms are tatami-floored with shoji screens, four-poster futon beds, and private onsen fed directly from natural hot springs. The kaiseki dinner — multi-course, served in-room by a dedicated attendant — changes monthly with the season and takes approximately two hours. Breakfast, also in-room, arrives at whatever time you request.

The public onsen at Gōra Kadan are carved from stone and landscaped with native plantings; the water temperature holds at around 42°C, which is non-negotiable and, after the first two minutes, completely correct. The Hakone Open-Air Museum, a five-minute walk from the ryokan, holds a Picasso pavilion and sculpture gardens that work particularly well in October light. Owakudani — the volcanic valley accessed by the Hakone Ropeway — offers views of Mt. Fuji on clear days and the sulphur vents that produce Hakone's famous black eggs.

Kyoto: Days 5–7

The Four Seasons Hotel Kyoto sits beside a reconstructed 800-year-old ikeniwa pond garden in Higashiyama, the neighbourhood directly below the eastern mountains. The hotel's Tea House contains Shakusui-tei, a private tea ceremony room available exclusively to in-house guests — the ceremony is arranged by the concierge and conducted by a specialist tea master. For one evening, a private maiko performance is arranged at Hiroshimaya, a historic house in the Gion dis