■ Virtual Travel Apps
・Walk Around Japan (散歩で日本一周)
・Smanpo
・Walk the Distance
These are apps that use your step count to take you on a virtual trip somewhere other than where you actually walked.
Walk Around Japan (散歩で日本一周)
Your step count lets you take a virtual trip the length of Japan. Movement on a real map and Street View displays bring each area to life. The controls are simple and easy to understand, making it comfortable to use over the long term.
What we liked: it's easy to feel a sense of daily achievement. The routes are broken into just the right distances, and your progress percentage is always shown — both of which contribute to that feeling of achievement. Having a distant goal, crossing the length of Japan, also makes it something you can enjoy for a long time.
Ads sometimes play during Street View and similar moments, but not too often, we felt.
One very minor thing that bothered us: on launch, you move across the map instantly, so it's hard to get a sense of having actually progressed.
Smanpo
With this app, the virtual travel destinations are tourist spots around the world. Movement on a real map and Street View displays bring each area to life. Seeing things like the 360° panoramic view of Waikiki Beach is genuinely exciting.
What we liked: the interface is polished, stylish, and easy to use, and it matches the app well.
World tourist spots seem to be the selling point, but it actually has a feature that lets you easily create your own custom route, and we thought this was quite good. You can create one freely across a huge range of locations worldwide, so this feature might actually be the app's real highlight. You can start from anywhere in the world and build a route of any length you like, which also makes it great for mapping out your regular commute route in reverse, or walking through a travel destination's streets ahead of time.
Walk the Distance
With this app, the virtual travel destinations are tourist spots around the world. Your step count moves you along a preset route on a real map, letting you tour sightseeing spots. There are 25 routes in total, 2 of which are PREMIUM (paid).
The interface is easy to understand. As you move along a route, visiting sightseeing spots one by one, you can see information about each spot accompanied by beautiful photos — those beautiful photos might be the app's real highlight. You can also see other users walking the same route, down to which routes they've completed so far. That aspect is a bit interesting, but overall the feature set is simple and easy to follow.
This app does not support Japanese.
Category Comparison Table
| App | Price | Language | Highlight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walk Around Japan | Basically free (check in-app for details) | Japanese only | Simple controls make daily progress easy to feel |
| Smanpo | Basically free (check in-app for details) | Japanese only | Polished UI and highly flexible custom route creation |
| Walk the Distance | 2 of 25 routes are PREMIUM (paid) | English only | Beautiful photo-backed spot info, view other users' progress |