Hakone

A private day's walk with an English-speaking guide from Explore Hakone along the cobbled, cedar-lined Old Tokaido Road to the Hakone Pass and the shore of Lake Ashi. It stops at the yosegi marquetry workshops of Hatajuku and at Amazake-chaya, the Edo-period teahouse on the road.

Ninety minutes of zazen followed by suizen, meditation through the shakuhachi bamboo flute, led by the shakuhachi player Lenzan Kudo at Tokoan, beside the Kumano Gongen shrine at Ashinoyu. You may try the instrument yourself, and the session ends with hojicha and wagashi with him.

The Okada Museum of Art opened for your party alone after closing, from 4 p.m.: a curator explains selected pieces from its collection of Japanese painting, ceramics and Buddhist sculpture, then you are free to walk the galleries without crowds. The curator speaks Japanese; an interpreter can be added.

The museum's director, Mr Kanagawa, takes you through the major works of its nihonga collection, with stories of painters he knows, then seats you in the best places in the café for matcha or coffee over Lake Ashi and, on clear days, Mount Fuji. The tour is in Japanese, and is exclusive to your party only in the early morning.

An hour at the Maruyama Bussan workshop by the old Hakone Checkpoint, where artisans demonstrate yosegi marquetry and show you how to assemble a six-piece Hakone secret puzzle box, or a geometric coaster, to take home. There is no interpreter.

Hiroshi Sugimoto's Enoura Observatory, on a hillside above Sagami Bay, walked with its director in a private 90-minute tour that explains how the buildings are placed to take the light, alongside the restored stonework, gardens and bamboo grove. It involves walking up and down hills and is for ages 12 and over.