Naviu launched on iOS and Android on 1 November, giving foreign visitors to Japan a travel guide that lives inside their phone camera. The app uses artificial intelligence (AI) to answer travellers’ questions and augmented reality (AR) to lay routes and local stories over the streets in front of them.
Naviu operates as a business under TANGLE, a Tokyo company that also runs the tour operators TOMOGO! and Untold Japan. TOMOGO! connects travellers with local guides across the country through its own app, and TANGLE describes its mission, “Make the City Yours”, as the product of a decade spent helping travellers discover Japan.
Jack Mead leads Naviu and serves as chief executive of Ashita Co., the Tokyo firm that operates the app. In his view, getting lost is not the hardest part of travelling in Japan. The harder moment comes when a visitor stands before something remarkable without knowing what it is, and Mead said Naviu answers that question on the spot, in the traveller’s own language.
A Guide In The Camera
Naviu’s AI guide takes questions in 29 languages and bases its answers on the traveller’s exact location. Visitors can point the camera at a temple, a street sign or a shop front to learn what they are looking at, while an optional storytelling feature narrates local history as they walk from street to street.
For navigation, the app draws a semi-transparent path over the real street on screen. Many AR apps depend on a visual positioning system for this, matching camera images against a 3D map to fix the phone’s exact position. TANGLE says Naviu works across whole cities without one, relying instead on its own patent-pending mapping technology. AR experiences are already live at Tokyo landmarks including Senso-ji temple, Tokyo Skytree, Tokyo Tower, Meiji Jingu shrine and Tokyo Station.
Naviu also shapes itineraries around a traveller’s diet, interests, accessibility needs and available time. TANGLE says the app steers users towards side-street cafés and local landmarks that maps and guidebooks can miss.
Brands, Cities And Visitors
TANGLE has opened the app to brands, cities and creators, who can place interactive 3D and AR content at the spots travellers visit. The company calls this a spatial content network, and the Naviu website already promotes local offers and rewards for users. TANGLE has not published pricing for travellers or for the organisations placing content.
Japan drew a record 42.7M foreign visitors in 2025, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO). Arrivals have eased this year, with 30.7M visitors in the first nine months of 2026, 2.9% fewer than a year earlier. Visitors from China fell most sharply, a decline JNTO linked to a Chinese government advisory against travel to Japan and to fewer flights between the two countries.
Naviu gives TANGLE a self-guided product alongside its tour businesses, as well as a channel for brands and cities to reach visitors on the same streets. The app enters a market running slightly below last year’s record pace, and TANGLE has yet to say what travellers or partners will pay.
