Nagano (Living)
English
4 hours on average
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We, KGS, are a group of English-speaking tour guides based in Karuizawa Town, Nagano Prefecture. We send English-speaking tour guides to private groups. We provide various guiding services based on customers' requests. We can guide Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture as well as some places outside Nagano. Karuizawa is one of the most famous mountain resorts in Japan at the height of 1000 meters and within easy access from Tokyo. It takes only 60 to 70 minutes by Hokuriku Shinkansen from Tokyo Station. Karuizawa is an ideal place as a resort with everything you expect --- stunning nature including waterfalls, mountains and forests, a ski resort, a famous Prince outlet mall, cozy small and large hotels, hot springs, very good restaurants and cafes, museums, sport facilities, historic buildings, parks, and more! We are also delighted to guide other places in Nagano. Nagano, known as the venue of the 1998 Winter Olympic Games and for the Japanese Alps, has many attractive destinations including Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park, Zenkoji Temple, Matsumoto Castle, Obuse and more, while providing interesting experiences such as soba noodle making lessons, skiing lessons, sake / beer / wine brewery visit, fruit picking, hiking, cycling, etc. We have some fixed plans, but if you wish to make your own trip, just ask for customized plans. We hope you will have a lot of fun with our friendly and knowledgeable local guides in Japan's beautiful highland area.
*Please note our guides include both men and women with various ages. Whoever serves you, your guide will try his/her best to make your time in Japan special and comfortable.
We can confirm your booking after checking availability of our guides. We recommend early booking, like one to several months before the tour day to increase a chance to send our guide, but we can accept a booking up to 3 days before the tour day. We normally meet our customers at Karuizawa Station or Naka-Karuizawa Station (for Karuizawa History Town Walk, we start at only Karuizawa Station). If you meet our guide in other places than the two stations, such as your hotel lobby or other train stations, please note we may need to ask you to cover transportation cost.
Booked a personalized trip for cherry blossoms. After much discussion with the guide before booking they insisted on visiting komoro's Sakura festival. Had a great lunch, and a side excursion but the recommended site was extremely underwhelming. I felt if they visited the site before hand to see how the blossom conditions are and new before hand how there was only two trees throughout the park that blossomed. They could have repivot a better experience or be upfront to say yeah there's only two trees in blossom before I pay for admission to the park and not after I pass the admission gate. It just builds a negative experience overall. I did like the guide, I just felt things could have been done better or communicated better beforehand.
Please accept our sincere apology for not having met your expectations for cherry blossoms. We highly appreciate your honest opinions and taking the time to write them. Though it was difficult to estimate the timing of blooming, we admit that we should have conveyed the situation before entering the park. From this experience, we intend to improve our procedures including more investigation and better communication. We are sorry again. Finally, we wish to welcome your booking again in the future.
We arranged our half-day tour the night before (very last minute), and KGS responded that we would need to pay extra charges to meet in Nagano instead of Karuizawa. It all ended fine with us meeting in Nagano and getting a 3-hour tour that included chatting over a relaxed lunch and visiting the beautiful Zenkō-ji Temple and the san-do leading up to it in downtown Nagano. We thought about going to see the monkeys soaking in an onsen in the mountains, but it would have meant a long bus or taxi ride. We tasted shichimi-togarashi at a specialty store, and bought a scoop of yuzu and a scoop of black sesame flavored gelato that they sprinkled yuzu shichimi-togarashi on top of.