Walked over 10 miles today exploring Kyoto. Started the day with a taxi ride to meet up with my guide, Marcin, for a private, three hour Philosopher’s Path Tour: Nature and Buddhism in Kyoto.

Marcin is from Warsaw, Poland. He developed an affinity for Japan after watching “Shogun” when he was quite young. He has lived in Kyoto for 14 years and married a Japanese woman a year ago. Marcin is a scholar and a part-time lecturer at Kyoto University. He specializes in Japanese folklore, History of Kyoto, History of Japanese culture and Japanese religions. The big theme of his research is “How did Japan create the traditional image it is known for?”. Marcin is currently in the middle of a very slow and painful process of writing his Ph.D. thesis at Kyoto University (actually, he doubts he will ever finish it).

My tour was great – far exceeded my expectations and I learned a lot.

After the completion of the tour, I walked and walked and walked around. Kyoto is beautiful.