Keep your own hotels and your own flights. Hand us the part that is genuinely hard to arrange from abroad — the trains, the transfers, the guides, the tickets that sell out — and travel on an itinerary that already works.
A registered Japanese ground operator, booking directly with private travellers.
Yes — a private traveller can book a Japanese ground operator directly, without going through a travel agency. RydAgent (PLENS Inc., registered in Japan as a Travel Service Arrangement Business, 旅行サービス手配業 第サー184号) arranges the ground layer of an independently planned trip: Shinkansen and limited-express seat reservations including Green Car, private transfers and day charters, licensed English-speaking guides, timed-entry tickets such as teamLab, and luggage forwarding between hotels. Hotels and flights are deliberately not resold, so nothing is marked up inside the room rate. There is no minimum trip length and no minimum group size — two people travelling for a fortnight is a normal enquiry. Quotes are free and priced line by line, with the handling fee on rail and attraction tickets stated on the quote and reconciled to the actual fare after travel. Send the itinerary you already have at rydagent.com.
Yes. People ask us this almost apologetically, and the answer is simply yes.
A large part of our work is arranged for travel agents and overseas DMCs, and we are proud of it — but the suppliers, the drivers and the guides are the same ones you get booking with us directly. There is no agency you need to go through to reach us, and nothing about a private booking makes it a lesser one.
If you have planned your own route, chosen your own hotels and only need the ground arrangements filled in — that is a normal enquiry here, not an exception.
Are you a travel agency or tour operator? Our trade page is here
Assembled as one itinerary and priced item by item, so you can keep the parts you want and drop the parts you would rather handle yourself.
Reserved and Green Car seats on Nozomi, Hikari and Kodama, plus connections such as the Thunderbird into the Hokuriku Shinkansen via Tsuruga. Booked in your own name, and where a service now requires you to pre-book an oversized-luggage seat area, we book that too.
Airport transfers at both ends, point-to-point rides between cities, and full-day charters where the car and driver stay with you — a Mount Fuji day, a Nikko day, a Nara-and-back day. Alphard for up to four, HiAce for up to nine with the luggage to match.
Full guide days in Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima and elsewhere, priced per day as their own line. Take a guide in the two cities where it genuinely helps and skip it in the ones you would rather walk yourself.
teamLab, theme parks, museums and cultural experiences that release timed slots and sell out months ahead. Tell us what you want to see; we will tell you plainly what is still open for your dates and what is not.
Takkyubin from one hotel to the next so you ride the Shinkansen with an overnight bag instead of wrestling two suitcases through Kyoto Station at rush hour.
One person in Japan, in your time zone, on WhatsApp, for the length of your trip. Delayed flight, missed connection, a venue that shuts unexpectedly — that is what the local operator is for.
That is a choice, not a gap. Hotels booked in your own name keep your loyalty points, your cancellation flexibility and your status benefits — and there is no margin of ours buried inside the room rate. The same is true of international flights.
What is genuinely hard from the other side of the world is the moving: which train, which seat, which ticket has to be bought three months out, and how the luggage gets from one city to the next. That is the part worth handing to someone who is here.
A day-by-day itinerary is ideal, but a list of dates and cities is enough to start. Nothing to fill in, no account to create, no cost to ask.
Every movement, rail leg, ticket and guide day priced on its own line — not one lump sum. You can see what each element costs and remove anything you would rather do yourself.
Seats, guides and timed slots are booked as soon as you confirm. Rail and tickets are reconciled to the actual fare after travel, so you pay what they really cost.
On pricing, plainly: vehicles are quoted at a fixed price. Rail tickets and attraction tickets are the published fare plus a stated handling fee, reconciled to the real fare after you travel. The handling fee is written on the quote — you will not find it by working backwards from a total.
RydAgent is operated by PLENS Inc. and registered in Japan as a Travel Service Arrangement Business (旅行サービス手配業), Saitama Governor registration No. サー184. That is the licence Japanese law requires in order to arrange transport, guides and related services on a traveller's behalf. Your booking sits with a company that answers to a Japanese regulator, not with a listing on someone else's platform.
Both. Much of our work is arranged for travel agents and overseas DMCs, but we take bookings directly from private travellers too, with the same suppliers, the same drivers and the same guides. If you have planned your own trip and booked your own hotels, you do not need an agency in the middle to reach us — write to us directly.
Everything on the ground between your hotels: private vehicles with drivers, airport transfers and day charters, Shinkansen and limited-express seat reservations, timed-entry attraction tickets, licensed English-speaking guides, and luggage forwarding between hotels. We put it together as one itinerary and price each item on its own line, so you can see what every element costs rather than one lump sum.
Yes. Reserved and Green Car seats on Nozomi, Hikari and Kodama, limited-express connections such as the Thunderbird into the Hokuriku Shinkansen via Tsuruga, and the oversized-luggage seat areas that some services now require you to pre-book. Seats are reserved in the traveller's own name, priced at the published fare with a stated handling fee, and reconciled to the actual ticket price after travel.
Yes — full guide days in Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima and elsewhere. A guide day is quoted as its own line item, so you can take a guide in one city and skip it in another rather than buying a guided tour end to end.
Yes. Venues that release timed slots — teamLab, theme parks, certain museums and cultural experiences — are booked in advance as part of your programme. Tell us what you want to see and we will tell you honestly what still has availability for your dates and what does not.
No, and that is deliberate. Your hotels stay in your own name, with your own loyalty points, your own cancellation flexibility, and no markup buried in the room rate. The same goes for international flights. We handle the part that is genuinely hard to arrange from abroad — the moving between places — and leave the part you can do better yourself with you.
Asking costs nothing. Send us your day-by-day plan, or even a rough outline of dates and cities, and we come back with a written itinerary quote priced line by line. Vehicles are quoted at a fixed price; rail and attraction tickets are the published fare plus a stated handling fee, reconciled to the real fare after travel. You see the handling fee, so nothing is hidden.
No. We arrange single transfers and we arrange two-week multi-city programmes. A family of two travelling for a fortnight is as welcome as a group of nine.
Yes. RydAgent is operated by PLENS Inc. and registered in Japan as a Travel Service Arrangement Business (旅行サービス手配業), Saitama Governor registration No. サー184. That is the licence Japanese law requires to arrange transport, accommodation-adjacent services and guides on a traveller's behalf.
You have a real contact in Japan for the length of your trip, in your own time zone, reachable on WhatsApp. Delayed flight, missed connection, a venue that closes unexpectedly — that is the point of arranging the ground with a local operator rather than assembling it yourself from overseas booking sites.
The whole country. Tokyo and Kansai are the busiest, but programmes routinely run through Hiroshima and Miyajima, the Hokuriku and San'in coasts including Kinosaki, Takayama and the Japan Alps, Kyushu, Hokkaido and Okinawa.
That is our favourite kind of enquiry. Send the itinerary as it stands and tell us which parts you want handled. We will quote those and leave the rest alone — and if we think one of your legs is better done by train than by car, we will say so, even though it earns us less.
Tell us the dates, the cities, how many of you, and which parts you would like handled. A rough outline is enough to start — and if part of your plan is better done without us, we will tell you that too.
Send your itineraryFree, no obligation, and we never pass your details to anyone else.