What to do when your guide is boring you
 

Give him you camera and suggest he take photos of and for you. He knows how to get the best shots. Then you can look around without the commentary. Works extra well if you have interesting camera.

Better not to have a guide in the first place!

The advice of Elainee is almost right. Our guide at Angkor Wat was constantly advising about how to get the (in his opinion) best shots. But his photographic aesthetic was not ours. He preferred miniscule, almost unrecognizable, individuals posed at a distance in front of the monumental sights. Our solution was to turn over a Canon point-and-shoot camera for his exclusive use while we kept control of the DSLR and video cameras. Of course, you do this with lavish flattery for his good eye and sense of composition ;-)

I've gotta agree with Thursday. If you do your homework, most times you don't need a guide or you can pick up an occasional guide or audio guide as needed. It is difficult to be polite when a guide drones on endlessly. Our Angkor wat guide had so much info, but who can remember all of it! We enjoy taking our own pictures so we would not be happy turning over either of our cameras.

ask him to simplify things.. not so much detail...we have done that.. some times it works, sometimes not.. if not ask to return to your hotel and cancel future days, then have hotel get you someone..

Have another beer. :D

Make an excuse that yo udont feel well and have to return to the hotel asap!
Or ask for the "brief" tour. I agree with Dgunbug. Who can remember all the details of these too-long tours.
that said, a GREAT guide can really add to the place.

i'm really concerned that my japan guide may be toooo long winded... suggestions??

Rhkkmk, my experience with guides in Japan is a bit limited, but I'd be more concerned with lack of knowledge or being hurried along rather than long-windedness. A volunteer guide we had at Himeji was superb--history teacher, excellent English, well-informed, gently humourous. But on a few other occasions the guide was highly regimented, very perfunctory, anxious to keep things moving, and mostly concerned with the clock. I wonder if the issue is that Japanese people generally are not highly analytic, don't like to speculate or venture interpretations, and tend to want to hew to the official line.

Buy them a martini to slow them down.....

At least the tourist can do something about it, what happens when it's the other way around :)

Just call it a day.

Happy Travels!

Yes, better not to have a guide in the first place but... if I get myself into that situation, I tend to stroll away from the group and the guide and try to find out what time and where to meet them later.

@gertie - of course, sometimes the guide isn't happy with that! I did a day tour to Petropolis on my last trip, and when I said I would walk to the next stop and meet the group there, instead of waiting for one couple to visit a small museum I didn't care about and then ride the bus he was MOST insistent that I stay with the group. Eventually I stopped arguing and started walking! (You could see the church where we were going next from where we were standing.) I had a bit of the same problem with the trip director on my Smithsonian tour of China, but eventually he resigned himself to the fact that I wasn't always going to be with the group.