Audio tours
in Tokyo

Audio tours in Tokyo

History

The Last Samurai: How Japan Shut Down for 250 Years and Then Opened All at Once

A tour through the places where Japan's fate was decided: Edo Castle — today the Imperial Palace —, Meiji Shrine, the Yanaka neighborhood, and Ueno Park. For 250 years, Japan had the death penalty for leaving the country

🎧 25 min 10 stops 🚶 4.2 km JAESEN +3

History

Edo: the City of a Million People Europe Didn't Know Existed

Around 1800, Edo had more than a million inhabitants and was probably the largest city on the planet, but Japan had been closed for two centuries and almost no one outside knew. Twelve stops follow the capital of the Tok

🎧 20 min 12 stops 🚶 17.32 km ESENJA +3

Asakusa: the District That Burned Twice and Opened Again on Monday

Asakusa was the popular heart of Edo and Tokyo: the city's oldest temple, the theatres, the first cinemas, the taverns. The 1923 earthquake and the 1945 bombing flattened it, and both times the district rose again. Twelv

🎧 18 min 12 stops 🚶 4.17 km ESENJA +3

History

Yakuza: Organised Crime With a Nameplate on the Door

For much of the twentieth century, organised crime in Japan was legal in a strange sense: gangs had offices with their emblem on the door, their own magazines and friends in Parliament. Twelve stops follow that history f

🎧 22 min 12 stops 🚶 28.76 km ESENJA +3

History

The Meiji Era: the Country That Reinvented Itself in One Generation

In 1853 Japan did not have a single kilometre of railway. In 1905 it sank the Russian fleet. Between those two dates a teenage emperor and a group of former samurai dismantled a centuries-old feudal order and copied trai

🎧 21 min 12 stops 🚶 12.73 km ESENJA +3

Akihabara: From Black-Market Radios to the Manga That Conquered the World

After the war, on waste ground beside the railway, students and vendors assembled radios from black-market parts. That corner became the largest electronics market in the world and later the global capital of anime, mang

🎧 21 min 12 stops 🚶 16.33 km ESENJA +3

History

The 47 Ronin: Japan's Most Famous Revenge and What It Says About Honour

In 1701 a feudal lord drew his sword inside the shogun's castle and was ordered to take his own life that same day. Almost two years later, forty-seven of his samurai, now masterless, stormed the house of the man they bl

🎧 23 min 12 stops 🚶 20.87 km ESENJA +3

History

Tokyo, 10 March 1945: the Deadliest Air Raid in History

In the early hours of 10 March 1945, nearly three hundred B-29 bombers dropped napalm on the wooden districts of eastern Tokyo. In a few hours some 41 square kilometres burned and around one hundred thousand people died,

🎧 18 min 12 stops 🚶 12 km ESENJA +3

Suggested plan for Tokyo

Doing every Trevurs tour in Tokyo takes about 33 h in total. A relaxed way to split it:

No fixed schedule: start whenever you want, skip stops, or spread a tour over several days.

Tokyo on a budget

The Trevurs app is free and has 8 audio tours in Tokyo: 2 h 48 min of narration across 94 stops and 116.4 km of walking routes. Download them over wifi and listen offline, with no mobile data. Entry tickets to museums, churches or monuments along the way are not included. Premium, from USD 1.99, adds unlimited offline downloads, every tour and no ads.

How to travel on a budget with Trevurs →

Tokyo at your own pace

Each tour starts at stop 1 and you go stop by stop at your own pace: pause, rewind or skip any stop. No booking and no fixed start time, and it works offline once downloaded. 5 routes are longer than 12 km: split them over several days or use public transport between some stops.

• The Last Samurai: How Japan Shut Down for 250 Years and Then Opened All at Once
  Starts at stop 1, “Senso-ji: Japan Before the Tokugawa Shut It All Down” (map) · 25 min of audio · 4.2 km (~1 h 5 min on foot) · ~1 h 30 min in total
• Edo: the City of a Million People Europe Didn't Know Existed
  Starts at stop 1, “The Shogun's Hunting Garden” (map) · 20 min of audio · 17.3 km (~4 h 20 min on foot) · ~4 h 45 min in total
• Asakusa: the District That Burned Twice and Opened Again on Monday
  Starts at stop 1, “The Thunder Gate” (map) · 18 min of audio · 4.2 km (~1 h 5 min on foot) · ~1 h 30 min in total
• Yakuza: Organised Crime With a Nameplate on the Door
  Starts at stop 1, “Marked by the Law” (map) · 22 min of audio · 28.8 km (~7 h 10 min on foot) · ~7 h 45 min in total
• The Meiji Era: the Country That Reinvented Itself in One Generation
  Starts at stop 1, “A Manufactured Forest” (map) · 21 min of audio · 12.7 km (~3 h 10 min on foot) · ~3 h 45 min in total
• Akihabara: From Black-Market Radios to the Manga That Conquered the World
  Starts at stop 1, “The Station That Disappeared” (map) · 21 min of audio · 16.3 km (~4 h 5 min on foot) · ~4 h 30 min in total
• The 47 Ronin: Japan's Most Famous Revenge and What It Says About Honour
  Starts at stop 1, “The Corridor of Pines” (map) · 23 min of audio · 20.9 km (~5 h 15 min on foot) · ~5 h 45 min in total
• Tokyo, 10 March 1945: the Deadliest Air Raid in History
  Starts at stop 1, “A Gate That Is Not So Old” (map) · 18 min of audio · 12 km (~3 h on foot) · ~3 h 30 min in total

In one day you can do Edo: the City of a Million People Europe Didn't Know Existed (~4 h 45 min): about 4 h 45 min of touring with audio and walking. Doing all 8 tours takes about 7 days at a relaxed pace, as in the suggested plan on this page.

Exploring at your own pace, and when a guide is better →

Why an audio tour

• ✓ No group to keep up with and no guide to wait for
• ✓ Start at any time of day, on your own schedule
• ✓ Go at your own pace: pause, rewind or skip any stop
• ✓ No need to commit 2 or 3 hours to a single tour: do one stop or the whole route
• ✓ Works offline once downloaded

Trevurs is a free app for iOS and Android. There is also an optional Premium version, from USD 1.99, with unlimited offline downloads, access to every tour and no ads. It also helps keep an independent app alive.

How it works

Questions about audio tours in Tokyo

More audio tours in Japan

All audio tours in Japan →