Great trip, some hiccups along the way
I just returns from an amazing trip to Japan with my dad and brother, and its success was in many ways thanks to Asia Highlights. Our travel agent Claire took care of so much of the basic work of researching and booking things for us, and she was extremely communicative in the months leading up to the trip. It made everything feel very smooth. There are many places where I think there is room for improvement, however. If I did a Japan trip again I don’t know if I’d go with Asia Highlights simply because our agent Claire is not Japanese, and as far as I can tell has never been there, so she has no personal insight into the country. We had 4 guides throughout the trip, two of whom were not very engaging or informed (one was a student in her first year of school). We were lucky to have one incredible guide, Ho, for the majority of the trip who went above and beyond. One of the ways he did that was by altering our itinerary on his own from what our agent had scheduled to better match his more extensive, personal knowledge of Japan, as well as what he’d come to learn were our interests. Additionally, some parts of the booking process were a bit frustrating. We had told our agent at the start that we are very subway-savvy, and were excited to learn Japan’s renowned transit system. She insisted that the subway system is too complicated, and most Americans prefer having a private car most days. While I’ll admit it is a fairly complicated system, and she did allot us some days to get experience taking it, there were definitely days where we paid for a private car for a full day, but the car would only drive us 2-5 minute distances (easily walkable or transitable for a fraction of the price.) Meanwhile, other days we ended up taking hour long bus rides in the city when no car was booked for us. I think this stems from a lack of personal experience in/understanding of the city layouts. Also, we were very excited to go to the Studio Ghibli Museum as we are huge fans of those movies. And despite booking our trip months in advance, we were a told a month before that they were not able to get tickets to the museum because apparently the ticketing site had blocked Asia Highlights account and kept them from purchasing tickets for customers. If we had known that would be an issue we would have booked the tickets ourselves. In summary, the trip was incredible, and it was nice to not have to have put in hours of work researching and booking experiences. For that I am very grateful for the service Asia Highlights provided. But, if I did this again I would definitely book with a more local agent or guide who would have a better personal understanding of the country.