Ultra luxury Japan trip

Touch down at Narita Airport to begin your luxury Japan trip. Welcomed by a private assistant and transferred by dedicated car, your first destination is Aman Tokyo — no line ups, no buses, no uncertainty. Arriving through a 100-foot lobby adorned in washi paper, this is a hotel that doesn't merely sit within the city, but interprets it. Settle into your exquisite surroundings and let Tokyo begin its work on you. 

Your morning opens at the Tsukiji Outer Market with a sushi expert before a sushi-making lesson with a world-class master chef. Make it, eat it, and understand it differently afterward. Later, Nick Coldicott — sake fanatic, columnist, and curator of his own artisanal sake brand — leads you through Japan's national drink in a way most visitors never encounter. His access to brewers that the public cannot reach makes for an extraordinary tasting. 

The day begins before the city wakes, at the storied Isenoumi Stable, where you watch sumo wrestlers conduct their rigorous morning practice up close. It’s a rare window into a tradition that stretches back centuries. The afternoon pivots entirely: a Champagne cruise along the Sumida River, watching Tokyo's skyline reflected in the water. Choose the warmth of the afternoon or the drama of sunset; either way, it lingers.  

This morning, you hold a coveted invitation for a private tea ceremony. In an exclusive venue (no walk-ins allowed) recognized for the cultural heritage it embodies, you’ll follow in the footsteps of government officials and industry leaders who understand the experience not as a performance but living heritage. Your hosts are third-generation masters, each with more than fifty years of experience, who guide you through rituals where every gesture carries the weight of centuries. 

Your first-class carriage on the bullet train carries you to Kyoto, a journey that is itself a Japanese pleasure: impossibly smooth, precisely on time. Arrive at Aman Kyoto and settle in before your afternoon ikebana lesson with a master practitioner. Ikebana is not a flower arrangement as simple decoration; it is a discipline. Practitioners dedicate lifetimes to balancing sculpted flora and the illusion of a natural tableau. Find your own version of that balance, however imperfect, however personal. 

Day trip to Uji, a town known for tea and sacred architecture. Visit the luminous Byodoin Temple, whose Phoenix Hall (circa 1053) appears on the 10-yen coin. At Koshoji temple, share Uji green tea with a resident monk before a zazen session. The afternoon ends on Omotesando road, stopping in at Tsuen — Japan's oldest tea shop, in continuous business since 1160, now run by its 24th generation. 

This isn't just a pleasant walk in the garden, but a window into how Japan thinks about beauty, nature, time, and human restraint. Today, with an American-born gardener — the only non-Japanese graduate of a prestigious Kyoto training academy — you see intention. Touring a selection of gardens, some closed to the public, he unpacks what each pruned branch or raked stone actually means. You'll never look at a garden the same way again

Spend your morning at leisure. (At Aman Kyoto, that is no small gift.) This afternoon, a kintsugi master guides you through the ancient art of repairing broken ceramics with gold lacquer. The philosophy is as compelling as the craft: rather than concealing damage, kintsugi celebrates it, rendering fractures into something more beautiful than the original. You'll leave with a repaired piece of lacquerware — and a distinctly Japanese way of thinking about imperfection.

Board the bullet train in Kyoto, then transfer by private car to Ikuchijima — a small island in the Seto Inland Sea known, until recently, mainly for its lemons. Azumi Setoda, co-founded by Aman's Adrian Zecha and housed in a 140-year-old merchant family compound, changed that. Rooms of cypress, washi, and stone. Heirloom tableware on the dinner table. 

The Shimanami Kaido is Japan's most celebrated cycling route — a series of bridges and island roads connecting Honshu to Shikoku across the glittering Inland Sea. Today's guided ride is designed for pleasure, not performance. Pedal through citrus groves, fishing villages, and along coastal paths. This evening, dinner at Azumi Setoda draws on a tradition older than the hotel itself — seasonal Setouchi ingredients where lineage is felt and tasted in each dish. 

A private car delivers you to Bella Vista Marina, where guntû, a floating ryokan carrying just 19 guests, awaits. On board, life arranges itself around the unhurried: a six-seat sushi bar with sea views, a lounge serving Japanese confectionery, and dining built on the philosophy of “what you want, as much as you want.” Tonight, anchored off Suooshima, visit a maker who has spent a lifetime crafting bamboo chopsticks by hand.

For centuries, merchants and travelers sailed these same waters — carrying goods from Kyushu and across Asia to Japan’s imperial capitals. guntû traces those old routes today. Walk the stone-walled lanes of Iwaishima, whose islanders still carry that trading-era culture in their daily life. Continue to Kaminoseki, once a waypoint for Korean emissaries, and Yanai — its prosperous merchant houses still standing, a vivid record of Setouchi’s commercial golden age.

Two memorable experiences await today. First, learn to make washi paper using the same trees and techniques practiced here for centuries — a craft as meditative as it is precise. Then, try your hand at calligraphy brush-making, following a method so old it has barely changed. In the evening, guntû anchors within sight of Miyajima’s floating torii gate of Itsukushima Shrine. It’s one of Japan’s most iconic images, even more cinematic from the water.

The final morning on board passes slowly, guntû threading her return passage through the Hanaguri, Hakata, and Yuge Straits. Arriving back at Bella Vista Marina, two weeks in Japan come quietly to a close: the cities, the craft, the ceremonies, and four days moving through waters that have carried travelers, merchants, and emperors for a thousand years before you.