If you actually wish to experience authentic Japan, I advise you to travel on an ancient cross country pilgrimage route with a local pro photographer workshop leader.  The majority of photography agencies who are not local to Japan are only able to remain on the beaten tourist path, in most cases with extreme tourist pollution.  Non-local to Japan photography tour workshop leaders extremely dislike admitting that they actually know next to nothing about Japan and don’t have the answers when faced with historically, socially, and culturally significant questions from clients, so to save face, the photography workshop leaders or photography tour leader gives shallow, oversimplified answers, such as reducing Japan’s mystical, mythological, and sociological history to good and bad karma.  Wow!  Annually, I hear from clients who visit unique Buddhist or Shinto sanctuaries with intricately detailed pieces of masonry, carved figurines, or tapestries.  These sites are laden with historically, socially, and culturally significant national treasures.  At some of these locations, there are artifacts that remain an enigma even today.  Part of the reason they remain enigmas is because of the language itself.  The English alphabet has 26 letters, but there are over 40,000 kanji characters in Japanese.  Over 90% of kanji characters in Japan are not commonly used, but ancient scrolls, tablets, and tapestries among others in shrines, temples, historical societies, university archives, and museums keep the ancient culture and kanji characters alive, but it’s essentially a lost language to modern Japan.  The average Japanese high school student knows between 1,500 - 2,000 kanji, and even university professors and those with higher levels of education know about double, 3,500 to 4,000.  Without someone specializing in painstaking translation of ancient artifacts, these treasures would remain a mystery.  With my connections with acedia, plus UNESCO and ancient shrines and temples namely with the gatekeepers of these sanctuaries who are friends and colleagues, so they sometimes allow my Japan photo workshop participants and I to enter and photography inside these ancient holly sanctuaries, that house national treasures .  Good luck getting anything close to that experience with a bargain basement tour or on your own, unless you are really lucky and monks, priest or security guards are absent.  The phrase ‘you get what you pay for’ has never been clearer when thinking about the differences between my Japan photo workshop tours and run of the mill photo agencies.  When visiting photographers asked their bargain basement guides for information, they got insightful answers such as “You can find all this information on Google.”  In my opinion if join one of these types of tours you might as well use a magic 8-ball to figure out information.  What do you expect? You get an international workshop leader whose has little choice but to bargain basement price everything because they are not locals, so you’re not going to get the creme de la creme of the authentic Japanese experience.  I know this first hand, because the pro photography world is actually very small, and some running tours into Japan are my mentors, colleagues, and friends.  The locations where over 99% of international workshop leaders are introducing to clients are on the beaten path.  Even professional mater-photographers, some of the greatest of all time, lead photography workshops into tourist pollution because they don’t have a choice.  The world tour industry today basically works off of the net, and visitors are corralled to places the nation your are visiting want tourists to visit, so they can focus tourist dollars to locations that everyone has heard of such as☞Kinkakuji, Ginkakuji, Fushimi Inari Shrine, and Kiyomizudera in Kyoto or the Shibuya crossing, Sensoji Temple, Kanazawa, or the Tokyo Skytree, among many other locations that almost everyone who searches touring Japan on the internet knows.  As an amateur historian, sociologist I am drawn to digging and studying about places I visit, and living in Japan, I had not choice but to dive-into ancient Japanese folklore and history and befriended several academics from Tokyo University, Waseda University among other institutes of continued education.  They were and are of great help guiding me along my way to understanding authentic Japanese symbology, mythology, sociology, and authentic folklore, among other topics.  Mainly I lead photography workshop adventure off the beaten path and sometimes on, there are occasion I don’t have an answer to a question, but if I don’t have an answer, I’ll do some research or ask colleagues for insight, and get back you quickly.

If an international photographer visited Japan with the goal of seeing authentic Japanese shrines and temples, they may get lucky with a few off the beaten path locations, but they simply can’t go where I go.  Recently on my annual Essence of Autumn photography tour, I was traveling in the Chubu region of Japan, and my participants and I  departed for Akiyamago, where we visited a Buddhist Sanctuary.  After a brief introduction with the head monk, he allowed us to photograph inside the main hall; this is a rare opportunity, as 99% of photographers would be turned away, but due to my ties with Zen Buddhism in Japan and abroad we were welcomed to photograph inside. This Buddhist Sanctuary holds priceless National Treasures that we photographed, plus we enjoyed the lovely Zen Garden, then we headed for the highlands and a pond for autumn photography, after a full day of photography we headed back for our lodgings for dinner and toast on Japan’s finest sake. 

The majority of Japanese don’t want tourists in their backyard, would you?, Of course not!  And that is why they don’t share their treasured locations with outsiders because once the secret is out, their favorite location could become yet another victim to tourist pollution.  As a result none local photography workshop tour leaders take their participants to tourist-rich areas.  Over 100,000 people visit Kinkakuji each day, but locations I go to in authentic Japan don't want even a tenth of that amount of tourists.  The reason they don’t want tourist pollution is because the places I visit are part of communities where locals live, and people aren’t concerned about tourist money.  The shrines and temples also don’t have upgraded security for the national treasures they’re housing, so they don’t want to deal with the tourist pollution, and that’s my home, where I feel the most comfortable.  I won’t partner up with non-locals because they want to attract the common tourists, and I’m not interested.  Even mentors of mine.  They’re all set on locations in Tokyo, Kanazawa, Kyoto among other, and where everyone is standing shoulder to shoulder taking the same photos, WOW-authentic Japan hmmm?.  My mentors come with camera-toting tourists, but even if they walked into some of the temples I visit, they don’t have ties to Zen Buddhism, so they won’t be welcome like my participants and I.  They’re holy sanctuaries.  The priests of the shrines and temples recognize me as a kindred spirit and fellow Zen Buddhist, so they grant me access, and I let my participants know to express their appreciation and to be humble.  If I even have a 1% doubt in my mind that everyone will be respectful to the shrine and its surrounding grounds, I will steer my group away.  My continued access is based on mutual love and respect.