What‘s Included

What To Expect

Reviews

• Awesome experience

  Ryan B,

  Aug 2, 2025

  - Viator

  5.00

  Fantastic experience. Our guide for the castle was very knowledgeable and friendly, she moved at the perfect pace for us. The samurai experience was fantastic! Instructors were great and our teenage kids had a blast!!

• Samurai facts and show photos with lots of fun

  Leon V,

  Jul 31, 2025

  - Viator

  4.00

  Our Canadian guide, Tom, gave good, fun, funny and interesting information about the city, the castle and the history of the samurai. He also gave nice tips about other cities in Japan. The Samurai experience was very nice. You will learn the basics of drawing and tucking back the sword and an attack and defense movement. No practice fight, but nice pictures that looks like a nice fight.

• Very cool experience. The...

  jennifer D,

  Jul 28, 2025

  - Viator

  5.00

  Very cool experience. The castle was amazing and the samurai experience gave many demonstrations and instructions on how to properly perform the actions.

• Samurai Kai

  Courtney I,

  Jul 26, 2025

  - Viator

  5.00

  This was a fantastic experience. We’re so glad we signed up for this tour. Tim was our tour guide around the castle and he was knowledgeable and had a great sense of humor. The castle was everything we hoped for. Watch out for the steps! They are steep and narrow and we would not recommend this tour for the elderly or people with mobility issues. We followed our castle visit up with Samurai Kai. Kai was very knowledgeable and a terrific instructor. We dressed up as samurai, selected our swords and got down to business. Kai taught us about sheathing and unsheathing the sword as well as offensive and defensive tactics. After the instruction we acted out a samurai assault scenario. My boyfriend and son finally got to live out their dreams of being samurai. Kai went above and beyond. While we were with him a thunderous downpour began. He called us a cab and made sure we had a safe, dry place to wait. The whole family loved this excursion!

• Do not miss this experience!!!

  Ben U,

  Jul 6, 2025

  - Viator

  5.00

  This was SO great!! We don’t normally do a lot of guided tours because they often feel a little touristy but this one is a must do especially with kids maybe 7 yrs old or more. It happened to be our son’s 12th birthday this day and it was an unforgettable experience for him. Our guide, Matt, lived in Matsumoto but was from England originally. He was an active participant in some of the cultural groups related to the castle (the historical gun/samurai reenactment and shooting team) so he knew EVERYTHING about the castle and the samurai who used to defend it. Superb level of information, super patient, and not a single one of our inquisitive 14-year-old’s questions went unanswered. Our group was two families of 4 and was a great size. Matt was also very willing to offer recommendations (without kickbacks - so they were very genuine) for cafes, food spots, and other fun attractions. We gained so much more cultural and historical information about Matsumoto through this tour than we ever could have gleaned on our own. After the castle tour, Matt took us over to the samurai experience a few blocks away. The instructor there was a lovely woman named Miharu. She did not speak very much English but it was no problem at all. Matt stayed the whole time to take photos and be the interpreter. Miharu is a current/former stunt-person and a very good instructor. She helped us dress in cotton samurai outfits and taught us basic katana handling skills with relatively realistic feeling wooden katanas as apparently you have to have a permit (and a high level of skill) to use a metal katana. Miharu was outstanding with the kids and adults alike. I cannot recommend this experience highly enough.