japan

[PassiveAgressiveQueen]

We love the studio ghibli films, so on this alone have a fancy to see the Japanese countryside.

Does anyone have advice as we don't fancy the cities, is their much to do? will our complete lack of languages be a stopper?

I don't like group tours as i don't like giving up that level of control Over my holiday, are individual tours available?

We have a 5 year old and 10 year old.

It's certainly much easier to travel in the cities as a foreigner with no Japanese, but people are very welcoming everywhere. I lived in Japan for over a decade and had both DCs there. We used to have a weekend cottage up in the mountains, and the DCs loved pottering around catching frogs in the streams and rice paddies, collecting acorns etc - all very Ghibli (their favourite film was Totoro). But that was not something that would have been easy to arrange on a short trip as a first-timer with no Japanese.

Depending on your budget, you could try a travel company like Inside Japan which does small group tours or will arrange 'self-guided' tours - they make the arrangements and give you all the details, but you go by yourself with no guide. I have a couple of friends who did that through that company and it worked very well, though they were visiting cities not countryside.

thanks loads, I will check out that company

this one looks good
www.insidejapantours.com/self-guided-japan-holidays/i-mcah/mountains-and-culture-family-activity-holiday/?holidaysearch=1&type=sga&sga-theme=B&sga-duration=0-999

Yes, that looks pretty good - even seems to include the Ghibli museum. You might want to see if you could tweak it to include a visit to the Totoro House.

It is truly a lovely museum to visit.

www.ghibli-museum.jp/en/ is the website.

This museum however, will be closed between May 9th and July 15th 2016.

Your children would perhaps like to visit the two Disney parks as well.

We never found the lack of Japanese to be a problem overall; people were very welcoming.

BTW there is no tipping in restaurants.

I like no tipping, i wish resturant would just put the wages up and charge more