The Kamo River at dusk, with riverside buildings and distant mountains beneath a blue evening sky

About Us

Who We Are

We are a small team based in Kyoto, creating private guided tours across the city. Our routes connect historic streets, temples, shrines, gardens, and mountain trails. We share the history and beliefs behind each place and highlight the small details that can change how you see it.

Friends since high school, we now run Kyoto Essence Tours together.

Louis Imagawa

Louis explores Kyoto on foot, researching its history and culture and turning what he learns into the routes and stories we share with our guests.

Taiki Furusho

Taiki brings his background in technology to Kyoto Essence Tours, building the tools and systems behind the scenes that help us plan, manage, and continually improve our tours.

Why I Started Kyoto Essence Tours

While guiding travelers, I kept noticing how much of Kyoto could remain out of sight, even in the very places they had come to see, and how a little context could bring a place into focus.

What stayed with me was how close those discoveries were. Something as small as the direction of a stone can change how we see an entire Japanese garden. Why a Shinto shrine in a temple, or a Buddhist statue in a shrine? The answer lies in how deeply Shinto and Buddhism have intertwined. I love that moment when what I have learned connects with what I see, and I think to myself, "So that's why."

There are things I have come to love about familiar places only through returning, learning more, and looking again. To come all that way and leave with so much still unnoticed. I started Kyoto Essence Tours to share what has brought me so much joy, helping travelers make the most of the time they have here through discoveries of their own.

As I learn more about these places, I also find myself drawn to the people behind them, to what they believed in and what they devoted their lives to. What I first admired for its beauty becomes moving in a different way, and with that understanding comes a respect I could not have felt from looking alone.

I hope travelers leave with more than the beauty of what they saw, with the joy of understanding what it meant. When they remember a place, I hope what moved them stays connected to the thought behind its details, the people connected to it, and the feeling of understanding a little more. I would love for Kyoto to stay with them that way, long after their visit.

Louis Imagawa