Tour operator or not?

Hi
Our flights are booked and we have decided the following itinerary. We are first time visitors to Japan family of 4 with 2 teens (16 and 14) eldest is learning Japanese although not sure of her standard! My question really is whether to use a company like Japan experience or similar to book our accomodation, rail passes, airport transfers, luggage transfer?, mobile wifi etc or whether we can manage that ourselves? Our priorities are apartments in Tokyo and Kyoto with 2 bedrooms and a ryokan in Nagano and possibly hakone. I�fve booked a hotel in Nagoya already as we will try and go to the F1 at Suzuka. What do you think? How much of an issue is it if things go wrong or we can�ft work out how to get to places etc? Itinerary as follows:
27th March - land in Tokyo at 3pm from London.
27- 31 stay in Tokyo - we need an apartment we like the look of the Mimaru suites must have 2 bedrooms and living /kitchen area and private bathroom.
30th March hopefully go Horseracing at Nakayama before a concert at sunTory hall in the evening.
31st March travel to nagano for the night and visit the snow monkeys - stay in a ryokan?
1 April travel to takayama for 2 nights in takayama (need two separate bedrooms)
3 April travel to Kyoto until afternoon of the 6th April hopefully go Horseracing in hanshin on the Saturday en route to Nagoya. Same accomodation requirements as Tokyo!
6th April 2 nights in Nagoya (hotel booked already) as we hope to go to the f1 in Suzuka on the Sunday 7 April.
8th April leave Nagoya early and travel to hakone for 1 night.
9th April return to Tokyo for the evening to stay in airport hotel (already booked).
10th April fly home early back to London
Grateful for thoughts!

I guess you are a travel fan who like travel planning. I am not familiar with travel agents in the UK, but at least you can plan and book your travel in Japan by yourself quite easily.

As for transportation your travel requires many JR-Central sections which does not offer rail pass for Tokaido Shinkansen. Japan Rail pass will increase it's price drastically so you don't need to consider it.

You can reserve train/bus one month in advance, but your travel route seems to be not so crowded that you can just go to the station and by tickets on spot.

1. Tokyo to Nagano:Shinkansen.
2. Nagano to Takayama: JR train to Matsumoto and then bus to Takayama.
3. Takayama to Kyoto: Direct Limited Express train (probably once/day).
4. Kyoto to Nagoya: Shinkansen.
5. Nagoya to Hakone: Shinkansen and bus.
6. Hakone to Tokyo: Bus and Odakyu Raiway to Shinjuku.

There are some other options for 2. and 6.

If you want to stay in apartment type hotel which I also prefer, Booking.com and Expedia have "apartment" option so you can easily find hotels of your choice.

While it is totally possible to organize all of this on your own , it requires time and some experience in travel organization.
Most people here on the forum organize their own trips and will advise you to do the same. And while that is good advice if you aren�ft eager / experienced to do this, a travel agency is a good call. But use one that knows about Japan.

Regarding rail pass, it will not pay off. Just get single tickets.

We had an agent plan our first couple of trips but have since done it ourselves. If the agent knows lots about Japan, it would be useful. If not, I dont think they really help.

From travelling with our 2 girls for several trips, I would suggest you also consider as an option separate hotel rooms. I havent seen connecting rooms in Japan often, but we mainly had rooms next to each other or across the hall. That gives you a fair bit of flexibility, and some privacy, we would just communicate via messenger or the hotel phone.

At Takayama we stayed (in the separate rooms) at Hotel Associa. At Hakone we stayed in the Japanese Western room at Lalaca at Gora. The room was huge, you could easily fit 4 in it (though we took the little japanese room next door as well). With the night at Nagao, also consider staying at Karuizawa which is a few stops away by shinkansen. It is pretty trendy for a Japanese town. We stay at Le Grand Kyu there which is fantastic value.

If you're looking for apartments in Kyoto, you might search "Machiya House" (traditional long and narrow houses. "House of Eels" is I think what the translation is). I've never stayed in one, and have no connection to any provider, but I've seen photos over the years of various places and they always looked lovely.
Remember, if you're renting a traditional Japanese house, and sleeping on futons, then the concept of "bedroom" becomes flexible.

A quick Google search got me here: https://www.insidekyoto.com/kyoto-machiya but I haven't really even read the page so have no idea of how good/expensive it is. Just thought it might start you off in your search...

For my own curiosity, I've just had a look on Air BnB, and they have what looks like plenty of nice looking houses in Kyoto for holiday rentals.

IIRC, there were problems with ABnB a few years back (people not having the proper permission to run them as businesses), so you might need to read a bit more about the current situation, but the 3 or 5 that I just looked at now were all showing their business registration details so I'm guessing that there is a way to do it legally now?

"Machiya House" (traditional long and narrow houses. "House of Eels" is I think what the translation is).

House of eels???
Machiya ’¬‰®�@litterally means town house. Machi = town, ya = house (in this case)
‰V‰®�@unagiya means Eel restaurant

Sorry to be off-topic,

LikeBike,
�gMachiya�h in Kyoto has this other name of �gunagi no nedoko�h (beds for eels) because they are narrow - they used to get taxed by the width of the frontage that they built the part facing the streets narrow, but deep/long into the back.

Thanks for the correction.

I'm making no claims to know any Japanese. I just remember my first trip to Kyoto and going to a (?soba/or was it udon?) restaurant in one of those houses. It was long and thin, an ex-merchant-house IIRC, and I was sure that I remembered it saying that those type of houses were called houses of eels because of the long+thin thing. Seems like I must have got myself twisted up on that. Hope it didn't spoil anyone's day.

We stayed in a Machiya in Shinmonzen dori Gion probably 10 years ago. Everything was traditional except the bathrooms and electrical, but no cooking allowed. It was very nice, but that part of Gion at night (is very seedy, lots of host and hostess clubs and hookers about (Yamatoji Dori, more heading toward the station area), kind of detracted from it. The stairs are virtually ladders, we were stressed that someone would drop through them at night

a travel agency is a good call. But use one that knows about Japan.
Make sure your travel agent does actually know about Japan. I have been contacted by agents over the years that know nothing about the country, including one that thought picking someone up by car in Yokohama for a tour around Fukuoka was a good idea - they probably could not even spot Japan on a map let alone know how far that is.
As others have said, if you have the time, and do your research, you can plan yourselves. But, put in the time before hand, once on the spot you will waste too much time.

we organize our Japan trips by ourselves, but for apartements oftenly use Japan Experience - they really have great choices for Kyoto (Gion specially), different size and price. Only that should book quite early, they are quite popular.

We debated this issue for our upcoming Oct trip for long. We found two ways to use an operator
1. Go for an itinerary as fixed by them in coach + train. We rejected this option. 2 They will arrange as per your choice
( hotel, train, sightseeing) but will charge a good premium. This also we rejected after discussing in this forum. Everyone suggested it is now easy to book/ travel on your own and people are very helpful. We accepted this and now completed all bookings by ourselves. I am sure it will be fun.Any issue you can.ask here and people are very very helpful.However, one word of caution. You need to spend some time in finding out/ booking train/ bus/ local IC card / JR pass etc especially if you are going to some off-beat places. Be prepared for that.