Primrose Quarry Way builds custom routes through Japan for travelers who want to move at their own pace. From the cedar forests above Nikko to the back lanes of Kyoto's Nishiki district, with a guide who actually knows the place.
The story behind us
Summer in Japan, Off the Itinerary
Kenji Murakami started Primrose Quarry Way in the autumn of 2017, after eight years leading tours for a large agency in Osaka. The agency work was fine, but the groups were too big and the routes never changed. The same forty-five minutes at Kinkaku-ji, the same lunch stop on the Arashiyama road. One October, guiding a family from Edinburgh through the momiji season in Eikan-do, he watched them spend most of the visit trying to get a clear photograph through the crowds. He thought: there has to be a better way to do this.
The first year was small. Kenji took on six custom trips, all word-of-mouth, mostly friends of friends who'd heard he knew the back roads. He ran the bookings from a rented desk in Higashiosaka and did every guide shift himself. The routes got longer and stranger in the best way: a three-day walk along the Kumano Kodo, a sake brewery visit in Nada that turned into a four-hour lunch, a winter morning at Koyasan when the snow was thick enough to muffle the temple bells. 'I started keeping notes,' he says, 'and the notes became the routes.'
The notes I kept on those first trips became the routes we run today.
Plate 01Fuji Five Lakes and Hakone, 4 nightsFrom ¥145,000 per personPlate 02Kyoto Deep: Higashiyama and Fushimi, 3 nightsFrom ¥98,000 per personPlate 03Kumano Kodo pilgrimage, 5 nightsFrom ¥195,000 per personPlate 04Osaka Gastro Weekend, 2 nightsFrom ¥72,000 per person
"We asked for something that wasn't on any list we'd found online. Kenji came back with a route through Yamagata that we never would have found ourselves. The Ginzan Onsen evening was the best night of the trip."
— Sarah and Tom Whitfield
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How we work
Routes built around your dates
We start with when you can travel and what you genuinely care about, then build backward from there. Cherry blossom season, autumn foliage, a specific festival. We plan around the real calendar, not a generic template.
Transparent pricing from the first call
We quote accommodation, transport, and guide fees as separate line items so you can see exactly where the money goes. No bundled mystery costs, no surprise add-ons at checkout.
A guide who stays with you
On guided tours, the same person with you at the airport and walks with you through the last temple gate. We don't hand you off between contractors.
The Kumano Kodo is one of only two pilgrimage routes in the world to share UNESCO World Heritage status with another trail (the Camino de Santiago is the other). That fact appears in almost every article written about it, and it's worth knowing, but it doesn't tell you much about what the walking is actually like. The Nakahechi route, which runs from Takijiri-oji in Wakayama Prefecture to the Kumano Nachi Taisha waterfall shrine, takes most walkers four to five days. Here is what to expect.
Kyoto has 1,600 registered temples and shrines. The number is often cited as a reason to feel overwhelmed, but in practice most visitors end up at the same dozen sites. The question isn't which temples to visit. It's when. The difference between a good visit and a frustrating one at most of Kyoto's major sites comes down to timing, and the timing advice in most guidebooks is out of date.
A ryokan is not a hotel with tatami floors. The structure of the stay. The meal times, the bathing schedule, the room customs. Is different enough that first-time visitors sometimes feel uncertain about what they're supposed to do. This guide covers the practical details that most travel articles skip.
Kenji Murakami grew up in Nara and studied geography at Osaka City University before spending eight years as a senior guide for a large tour operator based in Shinsaibashi. He left in 2017 to found Primrose Quarry Way, driven by a specific frustration: routes that never changed and groups that were always too large. He has walked the Nakasendo twice, the Kumano Kodo three times, and once spent a February week in Koyasan researching winter temple stays. Outside of guiding, he keeps a detailed notebook of regional train timetables and is an unreasonably enthusiastic eater of regional ramen variations.
Fill in your dates and a rough idea of what you'd like to see. We'll come back within two business days with a route outline and a cost breakdown. No commitment required.
