Tokyo Tour

Wife and I used Tokyo Free Guide for a half-day tour of Tokyo last week. Great guide, Horshi, met at our hotel and proceeded to take us from one side of the city to another on the subway. Even with a lot of English signage we would have been totally lost without an good guide. They are all volunteers and refuse any kind of payment (other than transportation and food costs). We didn't use a local guide in our other Japan stops and now know that was a mistake.

A lot of walking, but a great experience!:D

Hi

We're going to Tokyo soon and would like to organise some kind of tour as we are only there for one day. Can you tell me how to contact these people ? Also can you give me some sort of average as to cost of meals I. E. breakfast dinner ?

We used a Goodwill Guide in Hakodate. We also just paid for his lunch and transportation while he was with us (not from his home which he told us was half an hour by train). We wondered how much lunch would cost, but he took us to a very inexpensive (around $10 each) restaurant frequented by locals and explained the different menu items and options then placed our orders. Our guide was a retired English and History teacher, who told us he was 85 years old. He was fluent in English, well informed and very energetic - we kept up with him but the other couple with us found it a struggle.

You can google Goodwill Guides for the cities you are interested in and apply on line. We didn't hear until about three weeks before our trip that we actually had a guide and others on our roll call who applied later were not so lucky.

You can reach them at http://www.tokyofreeguide.org

We had lunch and it ran about 800 Yen each. The day-long subway pass was about 900 Yen each.

Thanks for that I will look into it.