Japan Travel Bureau International

JTB appears to be the only way to get tickets for some Japanese attractions, unless you live in Japan. There may be more besides the one I was interested in, but I know for certain that if you want to go to the Studio Ghibli museum as a foreign tourist, you have to get your tickets here. Buying them domestically in Japan is impossible unless you’re there for a very long time, since the museum books up a long time in advance.
Anyway, I came here on a Saturday, as soon as the tickets for my dates went on sale. It’s an unassuming office in an run of the mill office building. I came in and was assisted by an extremely polite and earnest young woman. She gave me a form to fill out, then took that back to process. She was literally running around in the office getting things arranged — I almost felt like saying I wasn’t in a hurry. Either way, in a few minutes, I had my tickets. Easy as pie.
They had a nice rack of brochures, which I grabbed a few of. There were some magazines, tour guides, etc, but also a lot of content that was in Japanese. Which leads me to ask… aren’t the people visiting this travel agency most likely Americans? Going on vacation to Japan? And thus unlikely to read or speak Japanese? Or are there lots of native Japanese people, or Japanese tourists to the US… visiting this travel agency to find out about things to do back home? Anyway, the commercial aviation and Star Alliance fanboy inside of me grabbed a bunch of ANA and United brochures.
So even though I didn’t use this agency for the traditional stuff like airfare or arranging a tour, I’m happy with my experience. In my dealings with them in person and over the phone, I get the feeling that as a more «specialized» agency that’s focused on a specific country, and is maybe even affiliated/​subsidized by the Japanese government, they would do a good job of covering your travel needs for Japan, probably better than a «generic» travel agent (which I would never use in the first place, but still).