What are the changes from 2019?
First off, the trip is a day shorter (10 days vs 11 days).
Day 2, they dropped a visit to Tenryu-ji Zen Temple, and the Sogenchi Garden (which were beautiful). They also dropped the Otowa-san Kiyomizu-dera (the Pure Water Temple) which were on beautiful grounds. They weren't replaced with anything, just an afternoon on your own.
Day 5, they dropped the visit to the Tōdai-ji Temple and Park in Nara, where the "Big Buddha Hall" is (purportedly the largest wooden structure in the world). I really enjoyed that. They also dropped the mochi-making demonstration, but that was logistically bad.
Day 8 was completely dropped. It was a drive from Takayama to Tokyo, which included a visit to the Hakone Open Air Museum which was absolutely fabulous! Then you had lunch by the beach, and visited Kōtoku-in Temple, which is home to one of Japan’s National Treasures – the Great Buddha of Kamakura. Then there was a seriously fun stop at the CupNoodles Museum where you got to design and watch them package up your own CupNoodles in a cup you decorated. It really was fun and unique. Instead, the current trip takes the train straight to Tokyo.
On the new Day 8, they skip the visit to the Hamarikyu Gardens Metro Park, and instead do a tea ceremony at Happo En, the restaurant where the farewell dinner was in 2019. They did add in a visit to Tokyo Tower, which I hear is great, and they dropped the Sushi-making lesson, the visit to Senso-ji Temple (which was mostly a good shopping opportunity) and the Sumida River Boat Cruise, which I enjoyed, but I know a lot of people did not (if there'd been some sort of narration of what we were seeing, it would have helped).
New Day 9, they skip the Meiji Jingu Shrine, which had a gorgeous, lush park, but I do have to admit, at that point we'd seen a lot of shrines. They instead go to the Toyosu Fish Market. They skip Takeshita Street, which really was a trippy street filled with anime-inspired shops and they added in one really good thing, a visit to Teamlab Borderless, a fabulous Digital Art Museum that I and a few others did on our On Your Own time in 2019. It's really quite cool, and I'm glad ABD took a page from a bunch of us and added it in.
Hopefully that all makes sense.
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