Personal Kyoto: My Neighborhood and Japanese Family
Tour description
Most tours show you Kyoto from the outside. This one invites you in.
I'm Joseph—a Colombian living with 4 generations of my wife's Japanese family in Sakyo ward. For 2 hours, I'll walk you through my actual neighborhood: the shrine where my grandmother-in-law prays, the 100-year-old bath house where my neighbors gather, and my home—where you might meet my Japanese family and taste traditional Kyoto sweets.
If you've done the famous temples and still feel like something's missing—this is what you're missing.
What makes this different: This isn't a route I researched—it's my daily life. You'll understand how a Kyoto neighborhood actually works: the bath house culture, the family dynamics, the residential shrines, the abandoned houses. By the end, you won't feel like a tourist. You'll feel like you were invited in.
What we'll see:
- The Philosopher's Path area—but the parts tourists miss
- My home—and whoever's there that day (maybe my grandmother-in-law, maybe my wife, maybe my mother-in-law)
- Where my neighbors bathe (100-year-old sentō)
- My family's shrine where my newborn will have his first blessing
- Abandoned houses reclaimed by nature, hidden temples tourists walk past, and the best fried oysters in Kyoto
- Where I prayed before my wife got pregnant
No scripts. No crowds. Real stories from real life.
Maximum 5 guests. You'll never be anonymous.
No fixed price. You decide the value after experiencing it.
What will we see on this tour?
