Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Free Tours in Tokyo

We were in Tokyo for six days in May, 2010, as part of a three week vacation in Japan. When in Tokyo we had three free tours that were absolutely wonderful.

1. www.tokyofreeguide.com. This is sponsored by the Tokyo Tourist Office and they are private tours. They take you where you want to go. We had asked for a guide for one day to the Imperial Palace Gardens, the robot stores in Akihabara, and a Maid Cafe in Akihabara. Some people request multiple days, probably getting different guides. We had put in our request online about 5 weeks ahead of time. Our guide was Masa and he was excellent.

2. Ueno Park and Asakusa Guides. http://www2.ocn.ne.jp/~sgg/guide.html.
We did not need a reservation for the tour of Ueno Park. We just showed up at the allotted time. Again, our guide was very professional. We were the only ones who came, so it was a private tour. We did not use the Asakusa Guide because we weren't aware of it until after our trip was finished.

3. Edo-Tokyo Museum. We did not reserve this free tour even though the website says you should do so. Instead, we just arrived at 10:00 and were given a very professional guide who really brought the whole museum to life. Again, we were the only ones who requested a guide so it was a private tour. The guide tailors the tour to the types of things you are interested in regarding Japanese history. Also, the length of the tour is determined by you. We only had 2 hours of time so our tour was that length. We wished we had had one more hour to cover everything and she would have obliged.

We loved Tokyo and just wanted to share the great tours we had.