Truly Amazing Kyoto Experience - If you're looking for flexible and expert views of beautiful Kyoto, Takashi-san of Amazing Kyoto Experience is an excellent choice. I avoid guided tours due to their rigid nature, but Takashi-san customized our Kyoto tour and provided a delightful view of many interesting points. Takashi-san's English is perfect and his knowledge of Kyoto is broad. We arrived in Kyoto hoping for Cherry Blossom viewing, but the blossoms were late due to the cool weather. Takashi-san knew of a few secret spots where the blossoms had opened and took us there. He made the trip for us. In addition, he took us to several out-of-the-way exquisite temples. I've never felt less like a tourist and more like an explorer. Highly recommend!

Best guide ever - Natsuki is an AMAZING guide, she is kind, fun, her English is amazing, and she knows her way!. I highly recommend her, we had a fantastic day in this amazing city with her!

Helpful to Navigate Kyoto - Natsuki was our guide for a family of 5 and she helped us navigate our way around Kyoto. She was flexible with our start time and put together an itinerary that would work for a rainy day. She helped us get around Kyoto, spoke with servers at the restaurant she found for lunch and took photos of us at each place we visited. Overall, Natsuki was helpful to us and we got to see more than what we would have on our own. While she shared info at each of the places we visited, it was brief. So if you are looking for an experience with lots of historical information and details, this isn't for you.

Informal, casual tour - If you want a casual, informal tour with someone who knows their way around, I would recommend this tour but not if you want a formal, professional tour. Takashi clearly knows his way around Kyoto. We went to Nijo Castle, Nanzenji, Heian shrine, and Nishiki market. Since I wanted to go to a ramen place for lunch, he made the effort to find one. I do like that he was flexible to changing plans based on my interests. He took some pictures for me and also helped me to communicate. He is completely bilingual in both Japanese and English. In the beginning, however, he came off as very cold, distant, rude and even a little arrogant sometimes, bragging about being an experienced tour guide although he barely shared any information about any of the places we went to so I didn't really learn much. I even felt like he was making fun of me as I was trying to respect the culture and take off my shoes in the proper place and way before entering the temples. After lunch his mood seemed better and he was more friendly. Maybe he was just grumpy in the morning. His attitude completely lacked in enthusiasm in the morning and I even felt like he wasn't even interested in giving me a tour. But he was much more friendly and helpful in the afternoon. He seemed much more motivated to do the tour also. The part that really irritated me is that he didn't make it clear in his tour description that I would be expected to pay for his admission fees and snacks. Since this wasn't made clear in the beginning, I felt like I was just being taken advantage of since I did voluntarily buy him one snack on my own accord but after that it looked like it was just expected. He tried to pay me back once but I was already irritated and it just felt awkward to accept money from him. I also don't like that he didn't just ask for a review but pressured me to write one by asking multiple times. So I'm writing a brutally honest one. I've now done 4 tours in Japan and I can honestly say that this tour was lacking in maturity and professionalism. If I ever return to Kyoto I will not be doing this tour again.