Tokyo is the city where the standard advice to book tours is most wrong. It is one of the safest, best-signposted and easiest large cities in the world to move around alone. The metro announces stations in English, restaurants have plastic food models or picture menus, and nobody will bother you.
So the honest position is that most Tokyo tours are selling you convenience you do not need. What a guide can genuinely give you here is access to places where language is a hard wall: the six-seat bar in Golden Gai where the owner has no English and no menu, the sumo stable that will not admit unaccompanied tourists, the market stall selling something you cannot identify.
The strategy that works
Book two or three language-dependent experiences — an izakaya crawl, a market breakfast, sumo practice — and do everything else yourself. Buy timed tickets for teamLab and any observation deck directly, with no guide attached, because those are pure queue management.
On the Fuji day trip
It has the lowest satisfaction score of any popular Tokyo activity and the reason is simple: people book it in July, spend eleven hours on a bus, and see grey. If Fuji matters to you, go between November and February, check the forecast the night before, and use the free cancellation if it looks bad.
