Dec 15, 2024
Highly recommend - Our guide was amazing. Fun day! We even forgot a wallet at the Hot Springs and she went out of her way to find it two days later and ship it back to us in the US.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Aug 3, 2024
Great Day Trip - It was a great tour and the tour guide, Chan was fantastic. He was very nice, funny, helpful and professional. If anything, I would do 15 minutes less at the market and add the time to the temple and deers. The end was rushed a bit. But we did a lot in a full day.
Review provided by Viator
Nov 8, 2023
A great day trip to both Wakayama and Nara - The tour covers both the the Wakayama and Nara in a dedicated tour coach, it was great to see the countryside from Osaka city. It's not possible to make it by catching public transport.
Review provided by Viator
Nov 3, 2023
Great trip - Great stops and fully complete tour with perfect amount of time at each stop.
Guide was informative and thorough
Review provided by Viator
May 11, 2023
Great tour guide and value for money - POEY was an amazing tour guide and so friendly! Great sense if humour.
Great day out at a good pace. We had plenty of time at each of the 3 stops to totally enjoy our experience.
Definitely value for money - thank you so much Poey abd SA tours we will be back !
Review provided by Viator
Oct 24, 2024
A fun outing to cover a lot of ground and see new places! - Had a great time on this tour. Loved seeing and feeding the deer at the temple (though I wish we had had a little more time there) and the castle was very cool. The market was unusual (the sashimi show actually freaked me out a little, lol) but was a lovely quiet place by the water for lunch. Loved how the car travel allowed me to see other aspects of Japan than just city life.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Apr 1, 2024
Not worth the money. - Wasn’t super impressed with this tour, the price included nothing. No attraction fees, no lunch. Bring cash! Since most all the vendors we encountered only took cash. Also all the temple fees just took cash.
The tour guide spoke very broken English and you could make out only every other word. Still did an okay job, better than if I had to speak Japanese. I wish he would have told us more information about what we were passing, history, little tidbits that you can only learn from a guide since that is what you are paying for.
This trip was payment just to have a driver. You could have done ALL of this stuff yourself and had WAY more time at each attraction - since you don’t have hardly enough time at each thing you see.
Review provided by Viator
Aug 10, 2023
Great tour locations, bad tour guide experience - Overall, this tour has three great and distinct tour locations that are more unique compared to other tours that just involve multiple shrines in a row. At Wakayama castle, you can view the castle and get a panoramic view of the Wakayama city. After that Kuroshio Market is where we got lunch as well as witness the Tuna cutting show. There's even a theme park right next to the market but due to the lack of time you can only mainly take photos and walk around. And finally, Nara park which is where you can personally feed friendly and tame deers.
Location wise it is fantastic. Unfortunately, I still have to give this tour an average review mainly due to the tour guide. My tour guide was a part timer who goes by the name Marco. To be honest, calling him a tour guide can be considered a bit of a stretch as the bus driver could probably have taken over his job. First, he was mainly conversing in Cantonese (there were a few tourists who only know English) and when he was speaking in English, he wasn't very fluent in it and often left out details. There was even a time where he mentioned the time to return to the bus in Cantonese but failed to do so in English!! Secondly, there was hardly any "guiding" that was done. All he does is take us to the entrance of each tour spot, and then he leaves you on your own. This isn't much of an issue for Kuroshio Market since the bus parking is near the market entrance but for Wakayama Castle and Nara park, you can easily forget the path from where we came from the bus parking lot. In the end, this made me question what part of the "Tour Guide" was he actually doing. This feels like an extended taxi service where they just ferry you to the location, tell you what time to return and that's it. No guided explanation on the history of the tour locations. You could probably find more information about the locations via google than him.
S.A Tours please take note. Perhaps you may be short on staff and whatnot, but if you're going to hire part timers that is going to "guide" half heartedly, please WRITE THIS IN THE TOUR DESCRIPTION. This tour does not have a "tour guide". It's just a bus conductor that will let you know where you are and that's it.
Overall I can sum up this tour as basically for anyone that just wants to explore this places by yourself but does not want to drive there yourself. But even then, you will still be limited by time at each location, so maybe you will still be better off visiting these places on your own. Or at least not in this tour.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Nov 4, 2023
Do Not Waste Your Money - DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY THIS IS NOT A GUIDED TOUR JUST A MODE OF TRANSPORTATION.
If this tour could have been given -100 I would have given it that.
We booked an English speaking tour but were put on a tour aimed at Chinese speaking so when guide gave any information regarding history or directions- it would 20mins in Chinese and 2mins in English . The guides English wasn’t even basic so most of the time for directions we had rely on being close to one of the other tour member or them giving us instructions in English!
Before even starting the tour I inquired as to the language and was reassured that it was bilingual and be won’t have an issue.
The tour it self only gives an 1 hr at Nara and Tenoji temple and 2 hrs at market where u need at most 30mins!
Have done many tour through TripAdvisor and I am highly disappointed that they offer this tour and refuse to refund us for the tour.
To summarize plenty of other tour providers and websites offering this tour so to avoid disappointment use one of them.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Sep 24, 2023
Do not do it! - Waste of time and money. Out of 10 hours day, 5.5-6 hours was spent on the bus. First stop, Wakayma, 25 min tops. Didn’t have time to go inside, but spend 2.5 hours riding there! 30-40 minutes ride to the market. We were given 2.40 minutes to be there, when all you need about 1.30 max! Then 1.5 hours to Nara. Arrived to Nara at 4:45, shops were closing at 5 pm. We were given only 45 minutes there! No time to go in or around the castle. Then an hour going back to Osaka.
Despite the fact that we paid for English language tour, it was mostly in Chinese.
Our guides were two college kids, who were extremely sweet but didn’t know anything about history of places we went to. A colossal waste of our time!
Review provided by Viator