Thanks for writing such a great review! We love to show our LGBTQ travelers the best sights in Tokyo, and I'm happy to hear we succeeded so well with you. Andrew is truly bilingual, which makes a night on the town in Japan very accessible for our visitors from abroad. With some history, food, and a bit of fun too, we crafted this tour for balance and great memories. Thanks again for taking our tour, and for writing this review as well.

Dear 729karynh, Thank you for the super nice review of our Half-Day Osaka 4-Hour Off-The-Beaten Track Walking Tour! We admit that Osaka Castle is quite ON beaten path, but it's a must-see, and we do hurry up with some very local follow up spots to keep things more on the local side overall :) Hearing that our guests had enjoyable, memorable times with us makes us so happy. Thanks again.

Hi TheglobalCEO, We are so happy to hear you enjoyed our big night out in Osaka! I had a great time with you guys too :) Thank for also remarking on the tour's "great value". There are cheaper tours out there, but ours is all-inclusive and we don't cut corners, even to the point of including your transit cost while on tour. We want your night to be 100% fun and free from worry about possible extra costs being incurred. Thanks again, and happy trails!

Dear Bernie M, Thank you for the flattering review! *^^* So happy that the tour lived up to its billing as being a little "off the beaten path". We do of course have to cover the Castle, which is a very worthwhile stop, but then we take you deeper and more creatively into various "real life" parts of the city. Thanks for choosing our tour, and may your future travels be uniformly fantastic!

Dear Kathrine, I'm so sorry you didn't enjoy the tour. We've been doing this tour for over 2 years now and never once had a review as bad as this, so I take it very seriously. I'd like to address your points specifically, but I will start by saying that virtually every time we do this tour, people tell us it's the best tour of their trip, or the best food tour they've ever taken. This by no means is to say your opinion is invalid, but we are focused on making meaningful, unique travel experiences. Instead of everyone liking it just fine, I suppose this means that once in awhile someone just won't like it all. Local grocery shopping: Most visitors absolutely love exploring the market with us. If some random shopped pushed you aside, well that's not our fault, is it? It's a bustling crowded city, and sometimes things like that happen. Orientation: I suppose some people don't want to know where Kyoto, Kobe, and Nara are while we view the city from a lovely vantage point on a hill. Sorry if that was a drag for you. Raw whale: Well, I think you knew it was raw, and you didn't HAVE to eat it (we do provide about 15 types of foods to try a night when it's a group your size). However, I'm sure you were told this is not the giant whales that are tragically being hunted to extinction by some Japanese. The whale you ate is minke whale, which, according to information widely available, is even less threatened than bluefin tuna (maguro). It is a much smaller creature, and really not endangered a single bit. We NEVER serve endangered species. I am very, very serious about that. Dylan has a wealth of local knowledge. He speaks Japanese fluently and has a Japanese wife. I stand by him 100% percent. The tour, however, is more about having fun and learning about Osaka today rather than reciting facts. Perhaps this is where the miscommunication occurred.. but then again, I'm sure you were told all about the history of the shopping street as well. Stairs: Aside from train station (which you didn't use, because you left the tour before we even got to that part), there is no stair climbing on this tour. None. Even the train station has an elevator for those that wish. It is unfortunate that you chose to portray us as having "kept hauling [you] up steps." There is a gentle slope to walk up for a view, which you could easily have skipped. Dylan's English: I'm glad you thought his English was great. He is of Chinese descent, but was born and raised in Australia. I'd say him having good English goes without saying. Finally, since you actually left the tour even before hitting the halfway point, I humbly suggest that you are not in a position to accurately review the tour as most participants can. For example, you two times speak of the "3 hours of standing," but you left less than halfway into the tour. We often have a chance to sit here and there later in the tour. In any case, the standing and walking bit is not misrepresented in the first place. Again, we can't please everyone, but the vast majority of our guests, as our other reviews show, absolutely love the tour. Sorry it didn't work out for you. Regards, Kevin

Hi Kai, Thank you for the excellent review of our Osaka Night Tour. We appreciate you discussing the value proposition. We believe that although there are cheaper tours out there, the all-inclusive nature of our tour, combined with great guides and truly small group sizes (max 6), sets us apart. Thank you for taking the time to write the review, and may your future travels also be rewarding!

Hi Sandy, Well, we'll take it as a "win" that you still awarded us 4-stars :) Whether the tour is overpriced I leave as a matter of opinion, but I can tell you that just walking into the restaurants that we go to will probably not go as well as hoped. Virtually no one at any of the restaurants we go to (and we have a collection of around ten we choose from on any given night) have anyone who speaks a lick of English, and only one place has an English menu - which I wrote for them. Moreover, on our tour, food is really just a part of the overall evening's adventure. Regardless, we sincerely thank you for the review, and also of course thank you for choosing Pinpoint Traveler in the first place!

Hi brigittev898, On our Kyoto night tour, we love to give people the whole package of some old neighborhood walking about, history, a shrine, modern culture, and of course lots of good food! So happy it fell into place for you and your teenager too. Thanks for taking the time to write a review.

Hi Discover07181512585, So happy that you chose to take both our Osaka AND Kyoto night tours! They are different just as the cities themselves are quite different from each other, with their own highlights and idiosyncrasies. And not only did you take both tours, but you also took the time to rave about us here. That means the world to us! To say the we "outdid" ourselves.. well, now we're just blushing *^^* Thank you again, and may your future travels also be fun and fulfilling.

Hello, LPNSW. Seems to us that this is a fraudulent review. It is pretty clear from what you wrote that you did not actually do this tour. We have no record of an Australian taking this tour for at least a month back, and even then, your name is virtually anonymous and you did not say who your guide was. Still, for the benefit of clarity, I will address your points. 1. Osaka is not a hole. In fact, it's a pretty great place! 2. Why would we park the car a block from your hotel? This makes no sense. If we have a car, why wouldn't we stop in front of your hotel? We certainly wouldn't pay to park somewhere and make everyone (including the guide) walk for no good reason. 3. I highly doubt that any appreciable time was spent "catching up with acquaintances". Our acquaintances are not at the spots we take you, and anyway, it would be pretty unconscionably (and inconceivably) rude to do something like that. We are professionals, after all. 4. A car tour does not mean that you get to experience Osaka as a drive-thru experience. There is some walking involved. Not 12km, but at any rate, the walking we do is only when we can't drive any closer. For example, walking up to see the castle, or walking around temple grounds.. Which leads to... 5. If indeed you did do this tour, you would have gone to Osaka Castle, Shitennoji Temple, Kuromon Ichiba (fish market), and seen other things too that have nothing to do with shopping. So what you say about this is a complete fabrication. 6. If our guests want to stop and shop, that's fine. It's a private tour, so why would we mind? It just may mean that not everything on the agenda can be seen, but we are here to make your day happy and fun, not be dictators. How are we a rip off? That sounds like a company that doesn't actually provide a service as advertised, which is certainly not the case. I suspect, in fact, that you are disgruntled because you cancelled your tour last minute and did not get a full refund. Our cancellation policy is quite clear, and is quite generous in our opinion. Or perhaps you have some other reasons we can't think of, but regardless, what you have said here is slanderous, and very untoward.