private tour guides

hi,

im in tokyo for two days, the one day i want to visit the modern places like shibuya and shinjuku and the other day i want to visit the older sights like the temples in askawa etc.

the thing is that i would prefer a private tour guide to meet me at my hotel and then just guide me round the cities sights. looking at what ild like to see.

ive heard there are tour guides out there who will do this but does anyone know any specific ones that are good and trustworthy? or websites to go to find them, simply because ill be putting a lot of trust in this person and i wouldnt want to book someone dodgy! :0)

any help you can give me would be very much apppreciated

It is not a direct answer to your question but Tokyo government has volunteer tour guide service. Each guide takes up to 5 people and doesn't take any money for his/her service. Basically what you need to pay is transporation cost and entrance fees.
(Though, you have to go to the government office to meet him/her.)
http://www.tourism.metro.tokyo.jp/english/guideservice/index.html

If you want a real professional guide, who knows the town inside and out, what you are looking for is called "tsuuyaku gaido" (interpreter-guides), which is a qualification obtained through national certification exam. (This is different from conference interpreters or tour guides.) Those people might attend to group tours, small groups, or individuals as professional guides. The fee ranges (depending on the skill level) but the average for an 8-hour day would be 30,000 yen (plus travel expenses).

I believe that this is the organization if you are looking for someone:
http://www.jga21c.or.jp/f_introduction.html

AK, regarding "tsuuyaku gaido" (interpreter-guides), you mentioned that "This is different from conference interpreters or tour guides"
Does that mean you CAN run tours in Japan WITHOUT the "tsuuyaku gaido" (interpreter-guides) qualification?

I've run some shopping tours in Tokyo for family and friends, and I'm thinking about possibly running shopping tours as a small business.

Sandy,

When I said it's different from tour guides, I was thinking of the Japanese guides available on the spot at shrines or temples and give explanations to Japanese tourits in Japanese about the history, etc. of the place more on a voluntary basis. I think that if you want to do some kind of bilingual guide as *business,* you might need the qualification after all. But I am not sure, so please check through the website I mentioned above about the nature of the qualification :)