Photo: Suicasmo (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walk through Hase, the seaside quarter on the west side of Kamakura, starting on the shore of Yuigahama near the Enoden stations, a beach that saw battles in 1180, 1213 and 1333. It passes the Kamakura Museum of Literature in the Maeda family villa of 1936 and the hillside shrine of Amanawa Shinmeisha, then reaches Kotoku-in, where casting of the bronze Great Buddha began in 1252 and where the figure has sat in the open air since a tsunami destroyed its hall in the late 15th century. At Hase-dera the walk climbs past thousands of small Jizo figures, the Benten-kutsu Cave, the Kannon-do with its Eleven-Headed Kannon, the Amida-do, the sutra repository and the terrace above the bay. It ends past Kosoku-ji, Goryo Jinja beside the Enoden track, and up the 108 steps of Joju-in to Gokuraku-ji, founded in 1259, where the monk Ninsho treated the sick and gave medicine to the poor without charge.
17 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 · 53 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 7 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.
Yuigahama, Kamakura Museum of Literature, Amanawa Shinmeisha, Kotoku-in, Great Buddha of Kamakura, Kangetsu-do.
Shugen-ji, Hase-dera Jizo-do, Benten-kutsu Cave, Hase-dera Kannon-do, Hase-dera Amida-do.
Hase-dera Kyozo, Hase-dera Viewing Terrace, Kosoku-ji, Goryo Jinja, Joju-in, Gokuraku-ji.
The cast-bronze Amida begun in 1252, with sectional casting seams across the body and a faint patch of gold leaf near the right ear.
A small Korean hall said to come from a Yi-dynasty palace in Seoul, donated to Kotoku-in in 1924, with traces of its old paint.
A cave of rock chambers dedicated to Benzaiten, with her figure and Sixteen Children carved into the walls and small offering statues.
The hall enshrining the Eleven-Headed Kannon, each of whose eleven smaller heads carries a different expression.
The shrine beside the Enoden railway whose torii frames the tracks, with two large round stones and arrow-fletching crests on its roof.
Founded in 1259 at the pass into Kamakura, where the monk Ninsho ran a dispensary and gave medicine to the poor without charge.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 17 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. 17 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 Kamakura — the Great Buddha, Hase-dera and the Road to Gokuraku-ji, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
17 narration points, including Yuigahama, Kamakura Museum of Literature, Amanawa Shinmeisha, Kotoku-in and Great Buddha of Kamakura. That is about 19 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. 17 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.