It was a fun and interesting way to experience a part of Kyoto.

It was a great tour although would have liked to have finished a little earlier than the 6.30pm as we had to go out to dinner. Would also have liked to have had the taxi ordered to enable us to get back to our hotel from the home where we did our cooking class.
But the cooking class excellent and very detailed, and the vist to the market so very interesting and a chance to ask about the many foods on sale.

Tour guide and cooking demonstrator where great. The market tour was very interesting. Cooking class was well organised and food was nice

was a great . the ladies that do cooking class were gorgeous. bit of walking , so if you do this, try not to walk all morning like we did.

You need to understand that there is a 90 minute tour through the market before the cooking class. Also, the tour was not particularly enlightening, just shopping for a few ingredients. Tour guide did not know answers to most of our questions. The cooking class by Mieko was wonderful, however, and more than made up for the boring tour part. !

The tour is not value for money and is pretty much a first timers tour in Japan. The Japanese staff involved were very good however the content is very basic and on our tour, one of the key elements of the tour was unavailable with no addition or replacement.

The item missing on our tour was the sake tasting. The venue was closed on the day of our tour so we just had a quick look and kept moving. Sake tasting tour is one of the three main elements in the tour name so we were disappointed that it was possible, even though we chose from dates available on the website, not dates we requested.

The cost was 150 per person as well which is expensive considering its a walking tour with little overheads.

Of course we made the most of it and we still had a good time but as a professional tour, it dropped short.

The tour itself was great -- but it was a bit of a logistical nightmare since our guide did not wait for us in the area that was clearly specified on our instructions. We arrived a good 15 minutes early and were waiting exactly where we were told, which was down a set of stairs and out of sight from the street level. Our guide waited at the top of the stairs instead, and when the other four people in our group arrived they left without us (presumably they arrived shortly after she did, otherwise they too would have gone down the stairs to wait).

Our guide did not bother to look around before departing on the tour (if they had, we would have been very easy to spot!) and did not try to ring us. When we still didn't see our guide five minutes past our meeting time, we walked back up to the street level and to look around but by then the group had already left. Finally, 30 minutes and several expensive international roaming calls later, we tracked down our guide, who admitted that she was in error.

Again, this is not to discount the wonderful tour and activity -- which we thoroughly enjoyed. If I were to rate that alone, I'd give it 4-5 stars. Nevertheless, we were not happy about being told to arrive in a very precise location, doing exactly what we were told, and then being left behind when the guide decided to meet in a different location -- hence my low rating.