H.I.S Experience Japan, a new subsidiary of travel agent H.I.S, have announced they are introducing a shuttle bus service between Narita Airport and Akihabara/Shinjuku. The bus is free and is part of the company's new Wa-shoi! service. You can use the bus if you have 1,000 Wa-shoi! points which you can get, as part of an introductory offer, by registering with the site within the next two weeks. Some businesses also will be giving out free vouchers but all reservations need to be made online. There will be sixteen buses a day, exclusively for foreigners, although Japanese will be able to travel if they are accompanying foreign friends. The website estimates that the journey will take about two hours.
The service has just been introduced so it's too early to tell whether it will be easy to get free places on the bus or whether there will be lots of strings attached. Obviously, H.I.S want to use it to guide tourists towards other businesses so it may be that vouchers will be available if you spend a certain amount in certain stores. H.I.S is also starting up Kaleidoscope which includes a multilingual support line and "concierge" service for tourists:
Lastly, the company has set up Experience Japan which is aimed at helping foreigners do things like "get in the ring with a sumo wrestler" or "learn how to make Japanese home cooking at a Japanese person's house" and "train like a Ninja at a Ninja School." All this is supposed to be on offer now but it doesn't seem as if all the links are live yet.
