Audio walking guides in Nagano
Photo: As6022014 · CC BY-SA 3.0
These are self-guided audio walks around Nagano. You pick a route, put one earbud in, and the guide talks you through it stop by stop — what you are looking at, and why it is there. There is no group to keep up with and no meeting time. 10 walks covering Nagano, The Other Highway, The Door of Heaven, Matsushiro, Obuse, Suwa, Snow Country, Ueda and more, 336 minutes of narration in total.
Start your free guideA free account is needed before a guide plays. Hear a minute first if you would rather try it than sign up for it.
Every walk in Nagano
Nagano: The Temple With No Sect, and the Statue No One Has Seen
This city exists because of the temple at the top of this street. Not the other way round. Nagano grew as the town serving Zenkō-ji — the lodgings,…
The Other Highway: Walking the Nakasendō Through the Kiso Valley
This is the Nakasendō, and if you have walked our Yokohama or Hakone guides you have already met its rival. Edo-period Japan had five great highways radiating from…
The Monkeys That Learned to Take Baths
Before anything else, a warning that will save you a bad afternoon: this is a walk, and a fair number of people arrive not knowing that. From here…
The Door of Heaven: Togakushi's Cedars, Shrines and Noodles
The walk to the upper shrine is about two kilometres, it is mostly flat until it is not, and the middle section of it is one of the…
Matsushiro: The Tunnels Under the Mountain
A note before we start. This guide is about a wartime construction project built with conscripted labour, in which people died. It deals with the last months of…
Obuse: Where Hokusai Went at Eighty-Three
This is a small town. About ten thousand people, in a flat agricultural district on the plain north-east of Nagano city, surrounded by orchards. It receives well over…
Suwa: Riding Logs Down a Mountain, Six Centuries of Ice Records, and the Lake That Stopped Freezing
A wide shallow lake in a bowl of mountains, with towns around the whole rim and hardly any of it wild. On a still morning the far shore…
Snow Country: Nozawa's Fire Festival, Thirteen Free Baths, and Paper Bleached on a Snowfield
If you are here between January and March, look at the walls of the path you are walking in. That is not a snowdrift. That is the ground…
Ueda: The Small Castle That Beat the Tokugawa Twice, and the Family That Split Itself in Half to Survive
The first thing to say about this castle is that it is small. There is no great white keep. There is a stone platform, a gate, two turrets,…
Karuizawa: A Dead Post Town That Missionaries Turned Into a Resort, Under a Volcano That Helped Cause a Famine
A long straight street of shops, cafés, bakeries and boutiques, busy in summer, with mountains at both ends. It looks like a resort high street and that is…
Questions about walking Nagano
What is the best self-guided walking tour in Nagano?
It depends how long you have. Nagano: The Temple With No Sect, and the Statue No One Has Seen (30 minutes, 6 stops) starts at The bottom of the temple approach and is the one most people begin with. The Other Highway: Walking the Nakasendō Through the Kiso Valley covers a different part of the city in about 30 minutes. All 10 walks in Nagano are listed on this page with their length and starting point.
Do I need to book a walking tour in Nagano?
No. Every wanderaudio walk is self-guided, so there is nothing to book and no departure time. You start whenever you arrive, and you can stop halfway and pick it up the next day.
How much do the Nagano audio guides cost?
Your first guide is free. You make a free account before it plays, with an email address or a Google login, and no card. After that a single guide is $4.99, a 30-guide pass, spendable on any guides in any cities, is $29.99, and every guide in Japan is $59.99. It is a one-off payment, not a subscription.
Are these tours in English?
Yes, all 10 Nagano walks are narrated in English. Other languages are not available yet.
Can I do these walks alone?
Yes — that is what they are built for. There is no group and no guide waiting for you, so walking alone works exactly the same as walking with someone. You choose the pace and the order.