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“We were a very small tour group of only 5 people,...”

written by mvgodich on 27/10/2006

Good Points
Evenings on your own, since they don't plan anything for you.
Inexpensive as tours go.

Bad Points
Guide was NOT knowledgeable, so filled time with lame jokes and comments.
Tour was mislabeled Imperial Japan, with only enough time to get a quick photo of of any Imperial sites but time spent walking through shopping areas or riding a poor imitation Disney pirate ship.
Poor planning on itinerary, lots of backtracking, so we wasted time.

General Comments
We were a very small tour group of only 5 people, which may have been part of the problem. Our guide, a Japanese-American, obviously knew very little about any of the sites and we had no local guides to supplement his knowledge.

Most of the time we were rushed around on a bus, rushed through short tours of each site. An example was the Imperial Palace trip: of course, no one is allowed in the palace itself, but I knew that the gardens were open for tours, so expected we would do this. Instead, we spent almost an hour in the bus driving around in traffic within 5 blocks of the palace entrance, then the bus parked about 4 blocks away. We walked to the entrance where we could see the palace at a distance, had time to take photos, then walked back to the bus!



We were given time to walk around the Ginza and in a cheap electronics area, it was good that none of us were interested in buying anything. Since we had not been told to bring our passports if we wanted to do so. In fact, we were encouraged to leave them in our hotel because we wouldn't need them for anything!