Nara Customized Private Tour in 1 Day — Guide Kazu

Tour Report by Kazu

Hello, this is Kazu Akiyama, your tour guide. Nice to meet you and welcome to Japan. Thank you for joining me on the tour. Now I am a retired salaried worker, living in Osaka. I have been very much interested in not only learning Japanese history, culture, religion myself, but also talking about them (sometimes going off topics) in English with tourists from all over the world as well. I am so excited being with you as your guide on coming day! I am very much looking forward to you enjoying with me visiting the must-see places and some of the hidden gems. See you soon. Thank you – Kazu Akiyama

The guests were visiting from North America. The group had originally planned to include another member, but that person became exhausted by the extreme heat, so I ended up with two of the guests. We met at the station and took a taxi to Kasuga Taisha Shrine. From there the route was simply downhill for the rest of the day, so they could easily return to the station on their own at the end. They were amazed that deer were everywhere, but they said that in their home area encountering bears and foxes was completely ordinary, so when I asked, "Really bears? Could it have been wild boar?" they insisted it was bears — which made me wonder just what kind of place they live in. One of the guests worked as a doctor in private practice. There was a moment when I shared a little about my own background, and I mentioned that being a tour guide — where every day is a serious challenge — is quite different from the world of fulfilling responsibilities within a corporate organization, and that I was getting to experience a completely different world from before. One of them said this resonated with the difference between their earlier working life and their current way of working, and that they understood it well. In that way the two of them shared a sense of connection.

One of the guests was the quiet type and at first mainly talked with the other guest, but when we sat down together at the Sangatsudo Hall of Todaiji Temple and started talking about Buddhism and Buddhist statues, the conversation really opened up, and by the end it drifted off into lively discussions about onmyodo, the Four Guardian Gods, and Sun Wukong. It was memorable how the other guest just watched quietly with a happy smile. Although one member was absent due to the heat, these two were very tough. At first I had wondered whether they would make it as far as Naramachi, but they kept walking, asking questions as they went. And when I asked, "There's a place where you can see what I'm talking about — shall we backtrack about seven minutes the way we came?" they were like, "Alright, let's go back!" We really walked a lot today under the blazing sun. At the end they wanted to buy a souvenir in the shopping arcade, so we parted a little early. They said they were heading back to their hotel in Kyoto.

Click here for more details: Nara Customized Private Tour in 1 Day with Licensed Guide

Tour Report by Kazu

Hello, this is Kazu Akiyama, your tour guide. Nice to meet you and welcome to Japan. Thank you for joining me on the tour. Now I am a retired salaried worker, living in Osaka. I have been very much interested in not only learning Japanese history, culture, religion myself, but also talking about them (sometimes going off topics) in English with tourists from all over the world as well. I am so excited being with you as your guide on coming day! I am very much looking forward to you enjoying with me visiting the must-see places and some of the hidden gems. See you soon. Thank you – Kazu Akiyama