about
"We travel not to consume, but to connect."
Connect with place, people, and time. On Kamijima, the most meaningful experiences can’t be scheduled.
They grow through trust, attention, and the willingness to move a little slower and listen.
I always try to say, this isn’t tourism. Because our work begins where the guidebooks end.
We offer slow, personal journeys through Japan’s quieter landscapes, guided by relationships, rooted in respect, and always shaped by the spirit of Kamijima, our home.
Kamijima is not a product.
It’s a place, a home, and a promise.
Kamijima
Who we are.
We’re Matt and Momo, partners in life, and partners with you in this journey.
We have found our home on Yuge Island, part of Kamijima town, where the Seto Inland Sea sets the rhythm of daily life. It’s a place where time moves differently, and where relationships matter more than roles.
What began as a few cycling tours with curious guests slowly evolved into something deeper: a way of hosting that felt less like business, and more like welcoming old friends back to something they’d forgotten. We never set out to build a tour company.
We just wanted to live honestly, and share the parts of this island life that felt meaningful. Kamijima Tours was never meant to be big.
Today, we still guide a small number of guests each year, sometimes alone, but often with the help of others in our community. We work directly with local friends, captains, grandmothers, chefs, and storytellers who hold the soul of these islands.
We’re not here to impress.
We’re here to connect.
Place
"Tourism should never be the goal."
It should be a tool used to preserve, to uplift, and to remember.
We live in a world where places are turning into products.
Where culture becomes content.
Where “experiences” are optimized until the magic is gone.
We want something different.
Travel, for us, isn’t about seeing more.
It’s about seeing deeper.
When done with care, it can restore forgotten relationships.
Between people and place, guest and host, past and future.
Kamijima Tours is our quiet offering in that direction.
A way of saying: this place matters.
And so do the ways we meet it.
Virtue
The values we stand by.
We’re not here to scale.
We’re here to serve our guests, our town, and the land that holds us.
Kamijima Tours welcomes only a small number of guests each year. Every journey is privately guided and personally designed. No packages, no mass itineraries.
Because we live here, we move differently. Our work is grounded with local friends, grandmothers, captains, chefs, farmers. Our aim is not just to guide you through the islands, but to protect what makes them worth visiting in the first place.
Tourism is not the goal.
The goal is a living town where people still raise families, grow old, and carry the memory of place forward.
If travel can support that, then it belongs.
This is why Kamijima Tours was selected by the Setouchi DMO for the 2026 Cycling Award. For showing what’s possible when tourism becomes a tool for regeneration, not extraction.
