Before I tell you what bliss and the Authentic Cherry Blossom Photo Tours of Japan is, allow me to tell you what the majority of visitors will experience when they descend on the cherry blossoms every year in spring. Millions of tourists flock to Japan in anticipation of discovering the perfect cherry blossom and the untold hidden stories of Authentic Japan. However, the information that 95% of the people researching Japan comes filtered through search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, Google, and others. And this is what the common, on the beaten path tourist company wants to corral your money quickly and easily, not valuing you as a client, more as a commodity.
The three main pitfalls on the beaten path tour are accommodations, transportation, and meals. Many visitors studiously research prices for hotels and feel a sense of victory after they have booked a hotel marked down from $500 to $250. However, what the website isn't filling you in on is that the price reduction is due to in part dinner or other amenities being subtly removed. Because of the implicit connection between hotels and common tour companies, clients are told where to eat and which locations to visit to control the amount of tourist foot traffic in places such as Ueno Park, Sumida Park, Tokyo Sky Tree, The Imperial Gardens, Rikugien Gardens. As for transportation, if you are unfamiliar with Tokyo or any other metropolitan hub in Japan, the most common result is throwing your hands in the air and praying for divine intervention, then hiring a taxi and paying through the nose. Mt. Fuji is the most sacred mountain in Japan, and is the symbol of Japan, also being the repository of some of the most amazing sakura in the country. I've talked with visitors in Mt. Fuji exiting a taxi with a Tokyo license plate, and the visitors seem out of place and confused about what to do, so they introduce themselves to me, and after a brief conversation, I found out they paid $750 for their ride to Mt. Fuji. Lucky them, they could actually see Fujisan off the beaten path, away from tourist locations due to their taxi driver feeling sorry for them and being kind enough to take them a decent place without tourists mulling about. But in most cases, they would have been dropped at Kawaguciko Lake with no guidance. The more adventurous travelers catch a train to Kawaguchiko station from Tokyo (the fastest train is 3 hours one way - there is no bullet train to Mt. Fuji). Without accommodations, you'll spend a minimum of six hours or more on a train. Once you arrive at Lake Kawaguchiko, you'll be required to spend upwards of an hour hiring a taxi or riding a bus to get to an advantageous location to capture a decent view of Fujisan with Lake Kawaguchiko in the foreground with 100s of tourists queuing shoulder to shoulder.