A self-guided audio walking tour of Takayama, the castle town the Kanamori clan founded around 1588. It begins at the Takayama Jinya, the government house from which the shogunate ruled Hida after 1692, with its rice storehouse of around 1600, and crosses the red Nakabashi into Kami-sannomachi, a street of rebuilt wooden merchant houses with deep eaves and fire channels. It climbs to Shoren-ji, a hall moved here to escape a dam, the stone ramparts of the castle site on Shiroyama, dismantled by 1695, and the temples of Hokke-ji and Unryu-ji, whose buildings are thought to come from the castle. Back by the river come the Miyagawa Morning Market and two merchant houses rebuilt after fires, Kusakabe of 1875 timber and Yoshijima of 1908 with its sake sign. It ends with a float storehouse, Sakurayama Hachimangu, revived in 1623, and the exhibition hall where the autumn festival's floats are shown.
13 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 · 68 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 17 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.
Takayama Jinya, Nakabashi, Kami-sannomachi.
Shoren-ji, Shiroyama and the Takayama Castle Site, Hokke-ji, Unryu-ji.
Miyagawa Morning Market, Kusakabe Heritage House, Yoshijima Heritage House, Homei-tai Float Storehouse, Sakurayama Hachimangu, Takayama Festival Floats Exhibition Hall.
The shogunate's government house for Hida from 1692, used as a local government office until December 1969, with its old rice store.
A narrow street of wooden merchant houses rebuilt after the fires of 1729 to 1832, with deep eaves, lattices and fire channels.
The stone ramparts and moats of the Kanamori castle begun in 1588 and largely dismantled by 1695 under the shogunate.
A two-storey bell gate traditionally said to be a castle building moved here in about 1601, which survived the fire of 1729.
A merchant's house rebuilt after the 1875 fire without nails, its high ceiling held by a single 13-metre red-pine beam.
A hall showing four of the eleven autumn festival floats at a time, with their carvings, lacquer and karakuri puppets.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 13 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. 13 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 Takayama — the Jinya, the Old Town and the Festival Floats, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
13 narration points, including Takayama Jinya, Nakabashi, Kami-sannomachi, Kusakabe Heritage House and Yoshijima Heritage House. 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. 13 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.