Kyoto Customized Private Tour in 1 Day — Guide Kazu

What Is a Private Kyoto Day Tour Like? A Licensed Guide's Report on Kinkaku-ji, Daitoku-ji, and Gion

The guests were a group visiting from North America, and this was their first time in Japan and in Kyoto. They planned to travel from Tokyo to Osaka and Kyoto, then return to Tokyo for a few more days before heading home. Right next to the Hotel where I met the guests today, there is a small shrine called Kikuno Daimyojin, which is a quietly renowned and very powerful "relationship-severing" shrine in Kyoto, and one from which I myself (and my family) had once received its blessings, so I began by explaining it, including my own experience. The shrine's website states that its blessings are so strong that people should not come casually. In essence, if you gain a blessing recklessly for a trivial wish, what you lose may be greater. In life, there is an unseen balance in which gaining something means losing something else. The guests were deeply moved by the brilliance of Kinkaku-ji, the simple beauty of the tea ceremony and dry landscape gardens at Daitoku-ji, the history of Nijo Castle, the overwhelming presence of the thousand-armed Kannon at Sanjusangen-do, and the daily lives of geiko and maiko as well as the "ichigen-san okotowari" custom and the spirit of hospitality at the teahouses of Gion. I was surprised at how relatively accurately one of the guests understood the concept of wabi-sabi. By the time we moved from Sanjusangen-do to Gion, one of the guests had finally recovered from jet lag and became fully engaged, asking one question after another, which I found very enjoyable. While I was explaining kabuki along Gion and the Kamo River, one of the guests asked me if I knew about "Kabuki Democracy" in American politics, and when I said I didn't, they explained it to me. Many people may already know this, but apparently "Kabuki Democracy" refers to the situation in which the two major parties focus on staged, media-driven quarrels rather than actual policy solutions, or to congressional performances acted out according to a predetermined script aimed at pleasing the public rather than substantive debate. It is not an entirely flattering comparison, but I was embarrassed not to have known it, so I learned a great deal myself. I had many down-to-earth conversations about present-day Japan, the Japanese tax system, the average makeup of Japanese households, incomes, and how religion relates to daily life. Since we had been moving around without lunch, we said goodbye in front of a nice-looking restaurant on Teramachi Street, after which the guests said they would go to the Nintendo corner at Takashimaya, then stroll back through Gion on foot, hoping to encounter geiko or maiko before returning to the Hotel. As a final piece of advice, I told them it would be unthinkable to return home without eating okonomiyaki!

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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