Kyoto Customized Half-Day Tour — Guide Kazu

What Is a Private Day Tour of Kyoto Like? A Licensed Guide's Report on Daitoku-ji and Nijo Castle

The guests were visiting Japan for the first time from Oceania, traveling from Tokyo to Osaka and Kyoto. Today they came by JR from their hotel in Osaka. When I mentioned that I was also from Osaka, they were delighted. I immediately started my favorite little lesson of "ookini" and "dou itashimashite" (thank you and you're welcome in the local dialect). To be honest, both of them were quite hopeless at it, and we had a lot of fun with "ookini" all day long.

Since it was their first time experiencing Japanese traditional culture and history, everything they saw and heard seemed fresh to them, and they were full of excitement and anticipation. At Daitoku-ji, I explained its history, its connections with the imperial family and many warlords of the Warring States period including Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, what a sub-temple is, what Zen is, karesansui (dry landscape gardens), the pond-stroll garden style, stone lanterns, borrowed scenery, tea rooms, wabi-cha, wabi-sabi, and the connection of onmyodo (the way of yin and yang) with Japanese history. All of these topics flowed one into the next as a continuous story, and they listened to each one with genuine interest. Before I knew it, we had spent more than two of our four hours at Daitoku-ji. I can hardly praise my own time management, but that only shows how deeply they listened, asked questions, took notes, and even made video travel memos while listening.

What made me happiest was that today was during the Silver Week holidays, so there were more domestic and inbound tourists than usual. As one of the guests put it: "Those people are getting explanations from a foreign guide, or they came here on their own. But we are hearing the real, live story directly from you, a local Japanese person — that's a big difference." At Nijo Castle too, I was able to talk with them in even greater depth than usual. According to the plan we were also supposed to visit Sanjusangen-do, but we ran out of time here, and both of them said, "Time is time, it can't be helped, but we were satisfied because we got to hear so many stories." Since we had skipped lunch and I had been talking away the whole time, they finally said they were hungry, so we went to Nishiki Market, where I carefully explained about Teramachi and Shinkyogoku streets as well, and parted in front of Nishiki Market. At the end, they said, "We are thinking of you!" For a guide, this is the highest possible compliment.

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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