W hen my four-year-old daughter, Nora, is asked about her highlights from our recent trip to Japan , she says the same thing every time: Splash Mountain at Tokyo Disneyland . If pressed, her second favourite thing was a sushi restaurant in Shinjuku, where she could take items off a conveyor belt behind which chefs in white hats carved fatty tuna and bonito sashimi.

This dichotomy of experiences perfectly sums up a holiday in Japan, a land of high, ancient culture and cutting-edge technology, of karaoke and Hello Kitty. The country has experienced a tourism boom in recent years with as many as 41 million visitors expected in 2026, according to the Japan Travel Bureau. I assume that a portion of these are families with young children, especially if the queue at Haneda airport arrivals was anything to go by.

My husband and I planned to visit Japan before having children but it never happened, so we decided to make the most of our freedom to travel outside of school holidays, with a jam-packed, two-week trip.…