aitaiJapan

posted by Palle, Thelma, Marchan and Denver Christiansen, Danemark

date of activity: July 14, 2005

If your think of a guided tour as a guide with a yellow umbrella asking you to look left, look right and it doesn’t appeal much to you, here is the alternative!

A guide from aitaiJapan is more like having a good friend showing you the best places. The good thing is that you can decide what you find interesting or not and spend as much time as you like on the most interesting places. With a local guide you get lots of information that you will never be able to find as a tourist. That will put the things you see into a different perspective. An other advantage is that you don’t have to spend time reading maps and timetables and you can concentrate on the things you came to see.

We are a family with two children and our guide, Mr. Goto, was really good with children so they also learned a lot.

We had a wonderful day in Arashiyama where we enjoyed a trip with a train taking us to beautiful places along the Hozugawa River. We planned a boat trip on the river but unfortunately it was not possible that day because of weather conditions but our guide was good at improvising and instead we went to a Japanese garden where we had a beautiful view of Kyoto. After lunch we went to a mountain where you can see monkeys and you are allowed to feed them. It was a hit for the children. We had asked to see Tenryu-ji temple and here we were lucky that Mr. Goto had lived in this temple for 3 years and could tell us everything about daily life in the temple. In the evening we vent to see Cormorant fishing with Ms. Franzen. It is something you should see to believe.

Our day in Arashiyama is one of the highlights of our vacation in Japan and we are most thankful to our guides who have done a great job of arranging things for us.