Japan Autumn Leaves Tour: 10 Days from Tokyo to Osaka

Welcome to Japan in its most photogenic season. Your driver meets you at Narita or Haneda and takes you straight to the hotel. If you land early, an evening walk under the first turning trees of your neighbourhood is a gentle start.

Start beneath the golden ginkgo avenue of Meiji Jingu Gaien, then slow down in Rikugien — the Edo strolling garden at its best when the maples catch fire (and lit up at night in peak weeks). Afternoon in Asakusa: Kaminarimon gate, Nakamise snacks and Senso-ji in the late light.

Drive out to the Fuji Five Lakes. Walk the Momiji Corridor, the canal-side tunnel of maples on the lake's north shore, and catch Mt Fuji over the water from Oishi Park. Check in at an onsen ryokan: tatami, yukata, kaiseki dinner and a hot-spring bath under the mountain.

A Hakone day at foliage time: cruise Lake Ashi between hillsides of red and gold, ride the ropeway over the steaming Owakudani valley, and finish at Hakone Shrine's lakeside torii framed by maples. A second onsen night follows.

Ride the shinkansen to the old capital and go straight to autumn's headline act: Tofuku-ji, whose Tsutenkyo bridge floats over a valley of maples. As the light drops, walk lantern-lit Hanamikoji street in Gion.

Kyoto's eastern hills in full colour. Stand on Kiyomizu-dera's wooden stage above a sea of maples, wind down Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka, then return after dark for Eikando's famous illuminated garden (in season).

The Golden Pavilion doubled in its mirror pond, then the fifteen stones of Ryoan-ji's rock garden. In the afternoon, a classic strolling garden where bridges and maples were composed for exactly this month — unhurried, with tea on the way.

West to Arashiyama while the hillsides burn over the Togetsukyo bridge. The Zen garden of Tenryu-ji borrows the mountain as its backdrop; behind it the bamboo grove and the quiet Sagano lanes, where thatched gates sit under red maples.

Day trip to Nara: the sacred deer bow for crackers under ginkgo trees, the Great Buddha waits in Todai-ji's vast wooden hall, and the stone-lantern path to Kasuga Taisha runs through turning forest. By evening, check in under Osaka's neon.

A last morning on the wooded gorge trail of Minoh Park, where the waterfall drops through a wall of red maples — try the maple-leaf tempura on the way. Then a private transfer to Kansai International Airport. Safe travels home.