Kyoto Customized Half-Day Tour — Guide Nori

Private Kyoto Day Tour Report: What Is It Like With a Government-Licensed Guide in Summer?

The guests were a family visiting Japan from North America. In the pre-tour communications, their wishes regarding which places they hoped to visit changed several times, and I had to revise the itinerary repeatedly right up until just before the tour date. In this case as well, replies to my first contact came not from the guests themselves but from a staff member at the travel agency, which left me with a frustrating sense of being unable to get to the heart of things. Because of this, there seemed to be a gap between the requests I had pictured based on what the agency staff told me and the guests' actual wishes. In the end, once August arrived I was able to communicate directly with the guests via a messaging app, their true intentions became clear, and I was able to finalize the itinerary described separately. Communicating through the agency staff was not entirely useless, but it seemed to complicate my preparation work as a guide and to waste time.

On the day of the tour, when I met the guests and discussed the plan, one of the guests seemed very sharp and intelligent, and I imagined that a great deal of research had been done before coming to Japan. First, Kyoto that day was clear and very hot (as it is everywhere at this time of year), so we discussed how to travel between the sites and basically decided against using public transportation such as buses and subways, opting instead to travel by taxi (for the stretch between Nishiki Market and Fushimi Inari, which is close, we used the train as planned). I felt that this change in the means of transportation was extremely important in preventing the guests from becoming exhausted amid the ongoing intense heat.

During the tour, I received many questions not only at each destination but also in the car while traveling, and I explained as much as I possibly could. I have always believed that "curious guests sharpen a guide," and these guests reminded me of that once again. The guests also listened eagerly, not wanting to miss a single word of my explanations, and overall I feel they were satisfied with the tour. The words "Next time we would like to come to see the cherry blossoms in spring or the autumn leaves in fall" seemed to show just that.

Click here for more details: Kyoto Customized Half-Day Tour with Licensed Local Guide

Tour Report by Nori

Hi, everyone! I’m Norifumi Kamon, a government registered guide interpreter. Please call me “Nori”, or “Kamon-san”.
Let me introdece myself. I was born on April 17th in 1952 in Miyazaki prefecture in Kyushu island. I used to be an English teacher of Osaka Prefectural high school. When I retired from a teacher ten years ago, I decided to get a professional guide license. I wanted to play a role of the bridge between Japanese people and the people from all over the world as a second life of mine. After two years efforts, I finally got the guide license. Since then, I have guided several handreds of foreign people mainly in Kyoto and Nara for about five years except Corona Pandemic period. Almost all the tourists were deeply impressed by the beauty of nature, traditoin, culture, and art of Japan. I can surely help you enjoy and be satisfied with the sightseeing in Japan. And I’m looking forward to seeing you soon.