Kyoto Customized Private Tour by Car — Guide Kazu

Title: What's a Private Kyoto Tour Like? A Licensed Guide's Report on Daitoku-ji and Gion

The guests were visiting Japan for the first time from North America. After spending a few days in Tokyo, they came to Kyoto. The original plan was to visit Heian Shrine, Gion, Higashiyama, and Kiyomizu-dera, but the day before, I suddenly received a message that their accommodation had changed to a luxury hotel located on Ninenzaka. So on short notice, I proposed different spots on the day, which led to the itinerary we ended up doing.

At Daitoku-ji's Obai-in, one of the guests was very taken with the dry landscape (karesansui) garden and the pond-strolling garden with its tea house. Daitoku-ji is known as the place where Rikyu studied Zen and where he perfected wabi-cha, the tea ceremony based on wabi-sabi. It is also a special place where Hideyoshi, after defeating Akechi Mitsuhide in the wake of the Honno-ji Incident, held Oda Nobunaga's funeral over seven days. The sub-temples Obai-in and Soken-in are connected to Oda Nobunaga, and whatever story you tell there, the place itself carries a historical intensity. I think it is a place where guests can truly feel that. The guests said they were glad we had changed the itinerary, so I was happy they enjoyed it.

They were great lovers of sake, the kind who seem to drink it every day, and they had visited a sake museum on the previous day's tour. We talked about sake over the meal, and they clearly understood the differences between the special designation sakes (honjozo, ginjo, daiginjo, junmai daiginjo, and so on). They even understood, given the nature of junmai brewing, that each sake has its own quirks and that some suit you and some don't — which surprised me. One of the guests was heavily built, almost like a "barrel," and, as it turned out, practiced various martial arts including judo, Chinese martial arts, and Thai-style combat sports. The guests drank and ate well. From the moment I met them in the morning, the energy this person gave off felt a little different, which I attributed to their martial arts background. It took some effort to get such a well-grounded person to laugh out loud. But of course they were both good-natured, and they shared many stories with me about their home city and its people.

Kyoto has a great many narrow lanes (roji), which is one of the city's characteristic features. I explained that you can almost "warp drive" into the neighboring block as we cut through the roji (pronounced "rouji" in the Kansai region). The guests said that their home city is also a city of lanes, but that, unlike Kyoto, they are dangerous at night. They mentioned that they hoped to come back to Kyoto and Osaka before long, and I was glad to have shared the day with them.

Thank you very much to the driver, Mr. Suzuki, who navigated the tricky streets of Gion, going this way and that at my request.

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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