Photo: 663highland (CC BY 2.5)
A self-guided audio walking tour of the Sannai-Maruyama Special Historic Site on the south-western edge of Aomori, a large Jomon settlement that existed from about 3,900 to 2,200 BCE on a terrace near the mouth of the Okidate River. Its large-scale discovery came in 1992, during rescue excavations for a planned prefectural baseball stadium; in 1994 six huge post holes still holding chestnut posts drew national attention, and the prefecture decided to preserve the site. In 2021 it was inscribed as part of the Jomon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan. The walk starts at the Jomon Jiyukan and follows the settlement from the stone circle graves along the southern road and the South Mound to the pit-dwellings, of which more than 550 have been found and 15 reconstructed, the adult graves in rows along the roads, the raised-floor buildings, the wet North Valley, where organic remains survived, the North Mound carpeted with pottery and the children's burial jars. It ends at the six-pillar remains and their reconstruction, the large pit-dwelling, about 32 metres long, the finds in the Sanmaru Museum and Jun Aoki's Aomori Museum of Art next door. The site is about half an hour by city bus from Aomori Station, itself about twenty minutes' walk from the Shin-Chuo cruise wharf, so ship passengers should keep the all-aboard time in mind.
15 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 27 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 1 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Jomon Jiyukan, Stone Circle Graves, South Mound, Reconstructed Pit-Dwellings, Large Pit-Dwelling Remains.
Adult Graves by the Road, Raised-Floor Buildings, North Valley, North Mound, Children's Burial Jars.
Six-Pillar Remains, Six-Pillar Building, Large Pit-Dwelling, Sanmaru Museum, Aomori Museum of Art.
Reconstructed circles of stones about four metres across marking adult burials along the southern road for some 210 metres.
Fifteen of the more than 550 pit-dwellings found here, rebuilt to show homes of about 5,000 years ago.
A mound left as it was excavated, its surface carpeted with broken pottery of the Middle Jomon period.
More than 800 everyday pots reused for the burial of infants and young children, many near the North Mound and the houses.
The six post holes excavated in 1994 that drew national attention, kept under a preservation dome beside the reconstruction.
A reconstructed dwelling about 32 metres long and 9.8 metres wide, the largest of its kind in Japan.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 15 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 15 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Aomori — Sannai-Maruyama, the Jomon Settlement, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
15 narration points, including Jomon Jiyukan, South Mound, North Mound, Sanmaru Museum and Stone Circle Graves. That is about 21 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1–2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 15 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.