EDONOMY®　PROGRAM　－Discover Japanese wisdom

Corporate teams — offsites and incentive trips your team will retell for years

Business Schools, Universities & researchers — fieldwork with real practitioners in real places

International organizations, MICE & delegations — Kyoto’s living industries as a lens for policy and development

Travel designers (DMC / PCO / agencies) — distinctive programs, easy to propose; we can provide programs as your local expert partner

Businesses & organizations — from new hires to executives; fresh perspectives on management, innovation, and purpose, or a genuine alternative to routine trainings

Educational & cultural institutions — study tours, co-creation programs, and residencies that bring local wisdom into education and research

MA (間) — The Japanese Way to Reset

When did you last have a gap in your day? Japan has a word for it: ma — the restorative space in-between. Spend a day where few outsiders ever go: a private temple for guided Zen meditation, an exclusive sudare atelier where you weave your own coaster from Lake Biwa reeds, and a quiet shrine. Slow down, make something, and take ma home with you.

Approx. 8 hours ｜ Kameoka (Kyoto)｜ lunch included

WATER — The River That Built Kyoto

Kyoto’s temples, tea, and trade all began with water. Taste sacred spring water at its source, compare local waters over a bowl of matcha, then descend the Hozu River gorge on a two-hour boat ride steered by bamboo poles — the same route that carried Kyoto’s timber for 400 years.

Approx. 5 hours ｜ Kameoka (Kyoto)

BAMBOO — Culture, Conservation to Craft

Those perfect bamboo groves in photos? They’re not wild — they’re tended. Walk both a cared-for grove and an abandoned one, lunch on dishes served in bamboo vessels at a temple garden, then join a hands-on bamboo craft workshop with the local stewards keeping the groves alive.

Approx. 8 hours ｜ Oharano (Kyoto)｜ lunch included

FARM TO TABLE — The Meaning of “Itadakimasu”

Before every meal, Japanese people say “Itadakimasu”, a word that has no English translation. Harvest vegetables at a local farm, make tofu from scratch with a neighborhood master, then sit down to a hot yudofu meal made entirely by your own hands — and finally understand it.

5–6 hours ｜ Oharano (Kyoto)｜ meal included

SOIL — Where City Biodiversity Begins

Biodiversity isn’t only about distant rainforests. In two hours in a Kyoto park, learn to read soil, trees, and water like an ecologist — and take home a technique your city can use tomorrow.

Approx. 2 hours ｜ Kyoto city

WATER & FOOD — The Birthplace of Sushi

Sushi didn’t begin in Tokyo — it began by a lake, as a way to preserve fish with rice, salt, and time. Taste its fermented origin, walk a village where spring water still runs through every kitchen, and see rice and water become sake on the shores of Lake Biwa.

Full day ｜ Takashima (Shiga)｜ lunch included

How Japan Sees Beauty:
Kyoto’s 600-Year Forest & Tea House Craft

How did Japan see beauty?
Simple at first glance — until you look closer.
Spend half a day in Kyoto’s cedar mountains, where timber has been harvested for 600 years without killing a single tree, then in a tea house carpenter’s workshop. Plane fragrant cedar, and learn how to see.

Approx.5 hours ｜ Kyoto

Nara Programs

Coming Soon…

Young Government Officials from ASEAN

A 1.5-hour session at the Kyoto Museum of Crafts and Design — an introduction to Kyoto’s crafts with a mini hands-on workshop, offering policy insights from how Kyoto keeps its traditional industries alive.

Visited: Kyoto Museum of Crafts and Design (guided tour on the past, present, and future of Kyoto’s local industries)

Hands-on: Talk by a sudare (blind) craftsman / reed coaster making

It was helpful to understand the connection between Kyoto’s craft and my country’s craft.

International Creators

A two-day tour into the crafts of Tango, Kyoto — pairing each maker’s workshop with the places that shape their work, from shrines and forests to rivers, tracing a living culture of circulation from material to maker.

Visited: Kyoto Textile & Machinery Promotion Center, shrines, wisteria-cloth (fujifu) studio, Tango chirimen silk weaver, furniture workshop, coastline, forest, washi paper studio

Hands-on: Kumiko woodwork coaster making

I realized that for these makers, craft isn’t about making products for profit — it’s a way of life, deeply rooted in nature. I want to carry what I felt today into my own work.

Woodworker from Australia

A one-day program designed after an initial interview — a journey through Japan’s furniture culture, from traditional joinery to a working factory floor.

Visited: Kyoto Sashimono (joinery) Museum, tea room, incense museum, Kyoto State Guest House, furniture factory

Hands-on: Hand-planing at a furniture workshop / matcha in a tea room

Out of my 14 days in Japan, this was without a doubt the highlight.