Originally Posted by
donjo
I had contacted the Japanese consulate in Houston and they replied a couple of months ago that all tourist visas needed to be done through a tour group. The tour guide I hired agreed to obtain the visa on my behalf. About a week after supplying her with all the necessary demographic information she emailed me my "visa," as a .pdf form. I could not have applied for a tourist visa on my own even if I had wanted to based on their restrictions.
You could not request a visa on your own without the sponsorship of a company. The company had to issue a so called ERFS certificate which then you could use to request the visa on your own. For US citizen this could be done online:
https://www.evisa.mofa.go.jp/index The latter is something you'd need to do yourself, this can't be done by a third party because: "Applicant are required to log onto the JAPAN eVISA Website and display “Visa issuance notice” at the airport. PDF data or screenshot of the page will not accepted."