A young couple from Norway were talking about their travels in Japan. "We weren't that impressed with Kyoto," they said. "It was too hard to get around."
A week later, I found myself in Kyoto with my 15-year-old niece who was visiting me from the United States. As a 17-year resident of Japan and having taken tourists to Kyoto over a dozen times, we naturally passed up tour guide brochures that said things like "Kyoto Free Walk!" (Since when did they start charging people to walk around Kyoto anyway?).
But you can always count on guests to bring out the worst in you. It's times like these that you are reminded how much you don't know. About anything. While you attempt to get by on intelligence and wit, your non-Japanese speaking, first-time-abroad, 15-year-old guest will inevitably be the one who can guide you right to the spot. As I was looking intently at the map to get back to Kyoto Station, for example, my niece would say, "What's that big building right in front of us with the Shinkansen passing through it?"