We provide moments of serendipity, valuable encounters and enriching experiences. We provide access to places that cannot be accessed without connections or insider knowledge. We provide cultural understanding and discovery, offering enlightening perspectives on Japan and its cultural heritage.
We are a team of travel professionals offering the perfect balance between knowledge of Japan and insider connections as well as understanding of our guests’ needs and mentality. We not only provide great experiences, but making them meaningful and accessible to our guests while taking their background into account.
We act as a bridge between two worlds, allowing our guests to make the most of their Japanese experiences and encounters. Providing the utmost flexibility in a country is often considered to be inflexible is one of our major strengths.
The founder of Bespoke Japan Travel is actively involved in the Kyoto tea ceremony, noh performance and ikebana flower arrangement, providing access to some of Japan’s most talented cultural successors and artisans.
Holding an M.A. in Traditional Arts from Kyoto University of the Arts and having worked in various top management positions in the tourism industry for 15 years, Maru has developed an extensive network of connections to leverage when designing tailor-made cultural journeys.
Her passion for travel design and for Japanese traditional culture brought Maru to take up a new challenge by enrolling in a PhD course in Tourism at the University of Wakayama, with a dissertation focusing on the preservation of traditional culture’s authenticity through sustainable use of tourism.
A practitioner of tea, ikebana, noh performance and renga (Japanese collaborative poetry), Maru founded Bespoke Japan Travel with the aim of introducing Japan and its cultural treasures under an authentic light, allowing guests to understand Japanese culture at a deeper level through personalized and insightful guidance.
While inbound tourism has recently become an exciting yet challenging new factor in Japan’s everyday life, Maru’s objective is to focus on quality and sustainability in order to promote the preservation of the Japanese cultural heritage and to provide genuine moments of serendipity to the discerning visitors.
Maru is fluent in English and Japanese, and conversational in Hebrew and Russian.
After visiting Japan for the first time in 2005, Pietro spent many years studying the Japanese language and society both in Japan and his native Italy, where he received a Master’s degree in International Relations and Diplomacy from the University of Bologna.
Living in Japan for more than 10 years now, he has worked in a number of positions in the hospitality and inbound tourism industry, focusing on product management and business development for DMCs as well as destination promotion for local tourism organizations.
Being passionate about showcasing Japanese culture to foreign travellers, Pietro also has a long experience in designing tailor-made tours as well as guiding VIP guests throughout their Japan journeys. He also acted as a guide trainer at a number of events and training seminars across Japan.
Being acquainted with both Japanese and Western working styles, he is able to act as a bridge between the two cultures, supporting Bespoke Japan Travel’s business partners in delivering quality tours while maximizing efficiency, profitability and sustainability in the sales process.
Pietro is fluent in English, Japanese and Italian, and conversational in French and German.
As a Kyoto-based company, Bespoke Japan Travel makes travel arrangements and cultural discovery an artfully crafted experience, as a Kyoto artisan would do.
We provide access to places that cannot be accessed without special connections or insider knowledge.
We offer unparalleled cultural understanding and discovery, offering enlightening perspectives on Japan and its cultural heritage.
We providing serendipitous moments, valuable encounters and enriching experiences throughout the trip.
A fully tailor-made approach: crafting experiences upon travellers' needs, making details count, selecting the ideal guide match. The experiences we deliver are never the same.
