By Kelly Studer, Travel Designer | Explorer X

Traveling in Japan is the closest thing I know to feeling like you’re the main character in a movie, venturing out on an adventure of a lifetime, and coming back changed from the experience.

I recently returned from an 11-day trip planned for me by our “on the ground” team in Japan. I spent every day with someone from this team - me learning more about the Japanese way and them learning more about how Americans travel.

It felt like a master class in the art of planning travel in Japan. Before this trip, I didn’t know what I didn’t know (and I’ve even been to Japan 5 times!). But now I do.

I’m already dreaming about going back. There is nowhere else quite like Japan.

The food alone is worth the trip, especially if you’re an adventurous eater. The hospitality is unlike anything else on the planet. The hidden beauty waiting around every corner. The quiet and peacefulness you experience everywhere, no matter how crowded a place is.

A culture that is simultaneously a flashback to another era and a leap into the future, one that quietly recalibrates how you see your own life just by being inside it.

Japan is also one of the hardest places in the world to plan a trip to. Not just for travelers doing it themselves. For travel designers, too. The problem is that every instinct you’ve developed as a traveler, every signal you’ve learned to trust, works against you there.

The websites for the most extraordinary places are designed for Japanese customers, not foreigners: unpolished photos, dense text, sometimes written entirely in Japanese. Nothing about them is trying to convince you. And some of the very best places have no website at all.

Case in point, the most extraordinary place I stayed on this trip has no website and sits well off the beaten path in the Nagano Prefecture. True to the Japanese way, I wasn’t told much about it in advance. My expectations were fairly low because it simply hadn’t been sold to me.

As we pulled in, a man came out with a beaming smile, grabbed our luggage, and said, "Follow me.”

We walked through a gateway and turned down a winding path. And I just stopped. What was in front of me didn’t seem possible. Goosebumps all over, and I’ll admit it, I teared up. Too beautiful to be real. And yet completely real. The awe and wonder didn’t stop the entire time I was there.

The next morning at breakfast, I asked my colleague why he hadn’t told me how extraordinary this place was. “Oh yeah, it’s special,” he said, completely deadpan. “You can’t book it unless you know someone. It took us three years of trying before they’d let us book a room here.” Said with total humility. Zero salesmanship.

Three. Years.

Later in my trip, in Kyoto, my private guide took me down a side street to a restaurant with no windows and no readable signage, just a fabric banner over the door that means they’re open. Nothing about it was trying to convince you to walk in.

It was stunning inside. The meal was extraordinary. It cost about $10 and was one of my favorites of the entire trip. When I got my phone out to take a photo, I was politely told: no photos of the restaurant or the staff, please.

They don’t want to be out there on the internet. They want to be known by the people who find them, love them, and come back. The Japanese don’t hype things. They don’t market themselves the way we do. Quality is expressed through the work, not the announcement of it.

This is not an isolated quirk. It’s a value system. Japan is not capitalist in the way we are. The craft, the community, the pursuit of mastery: that’s what matters.

A five-star review doesn’t feel like a compliment to the business owner. It feels like someone saying there’s nothing left to improve. And that’s not the goal. The goal is always better. And that is actually quite beautiful when you understand it.

Which means if you’re trying to plan a trip to Japan using the tools you’d normally use (reviews, ratings, websites, what’s trending), you are very likely planning a very different kind of trip than the one you truly desire.

Yes, everyone is talking about going to Japan these days, and for very good reason. I’m obsessed with it myself. It is an extraordinary country to explore, and it will change you. I promise.

And the places and experiences that will actually change you are the ones you cannot find, book, or plan for yourself.

But we can.

Reach out. We’d love to plan yours.

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