You love to visit some special places in Japan?
What we tell you is not great news for those who like just spontaneous planning!
Do you think you find all in your guide book about Japan? Well, sometimes you do not find all.
In fact, there are many venues you need a advance (weeks or even months) booking to enter. Usually these are not crowded and simply amazing places. If you ever worked with Japanese companies, you know the culture is based on the long time planning with no flexibility ( not always, haha! )
Most common ways of reservation is that you need to send a physical letter and receive the entrance permission.
We can help this.
Our booking service fee starts from around 60USD or more per one successful deal (non-returnable even if in case of cancellation.) depending on difficulty.
In this 60USD, one attempt costs 40USD. Even we can not book, you will get the rest e.g. 20USD back as we use our staff and cost (a physical letter, tel. etc. ) to attempt.
Please note our service fee does NOT include the fee of the venue.
1.Kyoto Imperial Palace (Gosho)
This is the place for the emperor family lived since 794 till Meiji when the capital moved to Tokyo.
Built in the mid 17th century. Its garden has all mountains in Kyoto in its design.
Built in early 17th century. One of the best Japanese gardens in Japan. You need to be over 18 year old to enter.
This is the first whiskey distillery in Japan using the spring water in Yamazaki.
ca. 120 mosses ("koke" means "moss" ) covering the area etc. One master piece of Japanese garden. The entry fee is 4000JPY (34USD) "or more (increased as of Nov 20023 from its previous 3000JPY ) " as the temple asks!
If 2 months before your preferred date of visit, you can apply via online (without our help!) in which case, the entry fee is 4000JPY as of Nov 2023.
As of 2022, the temple does not allow entry of primary school student or younger (12 years old or younger).
Instead, the temple has some "kid visit day" plans which are 25 Aug and 29 Dec, in 2019. Every year also as limited as 2019.
An experience with Saihoji temple - Koke dera.
First you send the letter with your preferred date with a return stamp on another letter.
On the return the letter, the temple tells you which date you can attend. You are supposed to bring a calligraphy pen (called "Fude-pen") because you need to copy the sacred letters of Buddhism on your visit.
At the temple, it seems there is one time slot for 13:00-15:00. In popular season, there are around 140 attendees.
With the pen you bring, you copy the sacred letters of Buddhism on your visit (at the end of the writing, you can write your wish) and you pay 4000JPY or more (34USD or so).
After this, you can walk around the temple with the great garden full of moss. It may be 30-50mins walk (around 1km).
If you use our service, with the service fee of 60USD, we will prepare the necessary doc and send them to the temple to see if the seat is available. This does NOT include the entry fee of temple (3000JPY per person)
You need to give us
1) three - four candidate dates (we can not specify the time).
2) Your name
3) how many in total to visit ( up to 5 people and if more, you need to consult us to communicate with the temple)
4) Your home address (not a hotel in Japan) and Tel. no
5) Your hotel address in Japan (if you wish us to send the temple response in Japan)
And we will send the entry permit or other reply from the temple to your hotel in Japan by the letter with tracking usually 5USD or EMS to your home in overseas usually 30-40USD.
Our tip: Autumn (late Oct to Nov) is the extremely busy season so you must submit your request at least 2 months before.
[Finally you can book online now as of 2022!]
If one day to two weeks before your preferred day (2 months to one day before the day of your preference - effective as of Nov, 2023), you can book online (without our help!). The temple charges you 4000JPY instead of 3000JPY (after 2023 Nov, anyway, will be 4000JPY per person). The link to book directly with the temple is here.
Please note that the online booking is rather to take a last minute chance of someone's cancellation. But if you miss your seats by our service, you can also try this to take a last chance! With online application, you can only apply for two ppl.
Our guess for this change is that due to the Covid the cancellation rate went up and to fill these places, the online booking starts to enable "spontaneous" visit and now in 2023, so many applications at the temple could force the temple to take more digital way to deal with the applications.
If you can not show up, better call the temple to let them know asap. If you could not get a place but you are in Kyoto and want to try your luck, try the online booking.
Planning to visit Japan? Japan has many unique islands full of nature, and also beautiful rural areas. There are nice events such as Maiko dance happening every year.
How can you book an inn which only provide you a telephone number to book or a small and hidden but cool bar which is not even covered by TripAdvisor?
We offer you the booking service for basically anything in Japan.
We help you book:
1) Japanese garden/Temple/shrine with a special reservation requirement
2) Hotel, minshuku, ryokan, inn
3) Restaurants
4) Events, concerts, shows (Note: this is separate from our ticket booking service and Japan Fanclub proxy service)
5) Anything else which is book-able
When you want to book a hotel in Japan, we have useful platforms like TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Expedia, Rakuten travel, Agoda, AirBnB etc. where yon can grasp the information about the accommodation and pay and book in your own language.
But there are so many accommodations in Japan which are not covered and do not want to be covered by these platform. These are usually small hotels, inns( Ryokans) and guesthouses in local area.
If you explore our travel articles where we introduce totally wonderful but unknown travel destinations in Japan, you will see many small accommodations are only providing you a Japanese only website or not even an website (probably just a telephone number).
Many restaurants are not covered by any platform for foreigners. If you are familiar with Japan for internet scene for food sectors, there are websites such as Tabelog, Retty, Gurunavi, HotPepper which provide information about restaurants, bars (Izakaya) and pubs. Recently Tabelog starts English website ( not easy to use though).
Yet, some of these websites offer you a booking service and very famous restaurants like Sukiyabashi Jiro from Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Restaurant Kinoshita in Minami Shinjuku and the Japanese restaurant Kurogi in Yushima which you can book from their official pages directly, we notice these booking services basically cover major chain restaurants not small and good ones (hidden gems).
We will do our best to reserve a seat for you but please be noted that there tend to be long waiting list for very popular restaurants in Japan, some are months and some are years.
Beside restaurants, many of our customers also use our service to book concert tickets and book an event.
Besides some secret (yet very famous for being so) temple/shrine Japanese garden, Japanese business esp. the ones which have even no website are conservatives. These are usually the owners of small inns, family run B&B, old restaurants etc.
There are several steps to follow to secure the reservation.
1. Give us the contact of venue you want to book. (or let us know you want a place to stay on this island or area etc. This way, we search a place for you.)
2. Give us the name, address and contact information (for hotel, all members and for a event and for a restaurant, one name and the number of guests in total depending on the owner, organizer)
3. We check if the venue has enough vacancy
4. We provide you with a quotation with bank information
5. After the full amount paid, we will contact the venue to reserve
Note: if there is a long time lag between each step, you may not be able to reserve the place. In such a case, we return the fee after we subtract the service fee, relevant bank transfer fee, tax etc.
Like any other service of ours, we live up to the value of transparency, integrity and fairness.
Our service fee starts from around 50USD or more per one successful deal (non-returnable even if in case of cancellation.) depending on difficulty. We even send a personnel to book physically if required.
For accommodation booking, many venues ask for no cancellation policy and you need to prepay the total fee (incl. bank transfer commission, relevant tax, and our service fee), which is understandable for small business with high risk.
In some cases, we may need to ask for deposit.
This way, we will pay the venue in case of cancellation or no show in any circumstance.
Please keep in mind that our service fee does NOT include any of the cost of the venue.
In sum:
Our booking service fee starts from around 50USD or more per one successful deal (non-returnable even if in case of cancellation.) depending on difficulty.
Please note our service fee does NOT include the fee of the venue.
We need the full information as below. Some put the address of a hotel in Japan. We need your home address / company address. If any information missing, we may not be able to answer.
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Onegai Kaeru wants you to enjoy Japan trip.
If you are looking for more traveler"s info and can not find one, please let us know. We will try to help you with Japan Traveler Help Service (we work on hourly charge to arrange, book, find info you need). Feel free to contact us!
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Onegai Kaeru, a group of passionate travelers, bring happiness to the world with its shopping support service and original super cute items!
Disclaimer: Even though we try to make the info as updated and accurate but the accuracy of the information herein is not guaranteed by us. If you have any uncertainty, please contact the information source.
Sarah (Tuesday, 29 October 2019 13:48)
Thanks to Onegai Kaeru, we could visit Saihoji temple. Very good n best service.
Arigato