Ryokoya
You spend the day walking a city you have never been to. It is wonderful. Then you are back at the hotel with your shoes off, someone asks where you went, and what you have is: a street beginning with V, somewhere near the water, that place with the blue door.
Ryokōya (旅行屋, "the travel shop") is a travel journal that remembers for you.
Start a trip when you head out, then put your phone in your pocket. That is the entire interaction Ryokōya asks of you for the rest of the day. It notices the café you sat in, the shop you wandered into, and the neighborhood you crossed without meaning to — then hands you back the day as a story worth keeping.
HOW IT WORKS
• One tap to start a trip.
• Screen off, phone away. Visits, landmarks, routes and neighborhoods are recorded in the background.
• At the end you get a written story, a map of where you actually went, and stamps for the neighborhoods you earned.
WHAT YOU END UP WITH
• The route, not the highlights reel. Every walk, ferry and subway leg, drawn as it happened.
• A story in your own day's words, written from what actually happened. If Ryokōya didn't see it, it doesn't claim it.
• Stamps and city crowns that only mint when you genuinely arrived. No participation trophies.
• A designed book of every trip — city page, story, maps, your photos — yours to lay out and read at no cost.
• Your photos matched to the stops where you took them, so the journal fills itself in.
• Share cards worth posting, which hold back your hotel, and ask before they name where your day started and ended.
PLAN THE TRIP AHEAD
Build a route before you fly, check the weather window, and watch your wishlist light up as you get near it.
CITY PACKS, CURATED BY HAND
Thirty-one cities, 173 packs, 1,798 places — every one chosen for a reason, written up in a sentence worth reading, and verified by hand: coordinates, opening doors, and whether it still exists at all.
Every city keeps a tabitomo (旅友, "travel friend"), a small local companion with folklore of their own, who turns up in your trip summaries and signs your books. Gigi guards Paris. Pon works Tokyo. Coo runs New York, badly.
Each city ships with a free pack, so you can try one before buying anything. More cities arrive in updates, and packs you own are never affected.
PRIVACY, WHICH IS RATHER THE POINT
Your movements are the most personal data you have, and Ryokōya has no reason to know where you were.
• No trackers, no analytics, no ad networks. There are no third-party SDKs in the app at all — not one.
• Your trips live on your device, and in your own iCloud if you switch on backup. There is no Ryokōya server holding your history.
• Location is recorded while a trip you started is running. When no trip is active, Ryokōya is not following you.
• The one exception ships switched off. "Always Collecting" lets a City Pack place count between trips — places you already own, with no route and no GPS session recorded.
RYOKŌYA PRO
Free covers tracking, stories, stamps, trip books, and one curated pack in every city. Pro adds:
• iCloud Sync & Backup, across all your devices
• Unlimited trip plans — free keeps three on the go
• Email story summaries
• Automatic photo matching
• Trip Radar: a nudge when a saved place is near
• Walk View: first-person, street-level navigation
• GPX route export, for any app and any map
• Saving or sharing your trip book as a PDF
Pro is $2.99 a month or $24.99 a year, both auto-renewing, or $69.99 once for a lifetime unlock. Trip Pass unlocks everything for 30 days and does not renew.
Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. Manage or cancel your subscription in your Apple Account settings.
Terms of Use: https://ryokoya.app/terms
Privacy Policy: https://ryokoya.app/privacy
Made in New York, tested on foot.
