Walk Japan

Walk Japan has run small-group and self-guided walking tours across Japan since 1992, when two Hong Kong University academics turned their own study trips into the company's first route: the Nakasendo Way, an Edo-period post road that once carried samurai, merchants and imperial processions between Kyoto and Tokyo. Since then the operator has added routes through the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trail, the Kunisaki Peninsula, Tohoku, Shikoku and beyond, staying overnight in traditional ryokan and family-run inns along the way rather than hotels built for tour groups.

Walk the preserved post towns of Tsumago and Magome, where wooden buildings and narrow streets look much as they did under the Tokugawa shogunate, or follow older pilgrimage paths through mountain forest few visitors ever reach. Each tour is led by a guide with expertise in the history and society of the region being walked.