Our team at Inside Japan Tours

The sun never sets on the InsideJapan Tours team (well, maybe on Sundays) as we have offices in Bristol (UK), Broomfield, (USA), Brisbane (Australia) and Nagoya (Japan). On this page you can meet the people behind our Japan holidays and tours.

We have a wide range of backgrounds and interests, but you can be sure that the one thing that ties us all together is a love of Japan, Japanese culture and a passionate desire to share that with other people.

From the accounts department, through the travel consultant teams to the tour leaders and guides on the ground, you can rest assured that everything we do is to make sure you have the best possible experience of Japan.

Tom Weston
Sales Director
Email: tom@insideasiatours.com
Call: UK 0117 244 3371
Location (Bristol, UK)

Originally from Matlock in Derbyshire, Tom worked in a wide variety of different roles in the travel industry before joining InsideJapan in 2012.

Tom's interest in Japan stems from his student days, when he studied Japanese and Chinese at university. According to him, at one point he could write over 4,000 kanji (Chinese/Japanese characters)!

It was around this time that he became particularly fascinated by the cultural similarities and differences between East Asian countries - an interest that has been fuelled by a year spent studying Mandarin in Taiwan in 1994, two years as an English language teacher in Japan, horse trekking across the Tibetan plateau and numerous adventures in Southeast Asia.

Tom's fondest memories of his time in Japan are of the food, the people, the onsen hot spring baths, snowboarding (he once snowboarded from the top of Mount Chokai - at 2,236 m/7,336 ft!), and nomihodai (popular Japanese all-you-can-drink plans, available at many bars and restaurants). His favourite Japanese food is miso negi ramen - noodles in a miso-flavoured broth with onions - which he claims is unbeatable on a snowy winter's night.

Where is your favourite place in Japan, and why?

"My favourite place in Japan is the area around Tazawako in central Akita, where I lived when I was in Japan. It has beautiful scenery, lovely camping, great skiing, one of Japan's most famous onsen (Nyuto Onsen) - and the added bonus of easy access to samurai town of Kakunodate."

Relive a favourite moment in Japan...

Visiting a rural school

"Visiting a tiny wooden elementary school with around 15 pupils, miles up in a narrow valley in a rural corner of Akita, was an experience I'll never forget. I was the first foreigner that most of the children had ever met. It's remarkable that such places still exist in modern Japan, but very special."