Noboribito: Stairs to Summits

The stairs you climb each day become altitude. 125 destinations, from a 3 m hill to Everest, each with a seal of its own. No network, no account. Japanese interface.

Please note: this app's interface is in Japanese only.

Stairs become mountains.

Noboribito turns the "flights climbed" that your iPhone's Health app is already counting into progress up a mountain.

Station stairs, office floors, the steps at home. Flights you never think about add up, and before long you have passed Mount Takao and stood on the summit of Mount Fuji.

■ Every flight is progress

One flight counts as three meters. The app reads the flights you have climbed and draws where you stand on a cross-section of the mountain.

Unlike a step counter, nothing resets at midnight. Yesterday's stairs and last week's stairs stay with you, as altitude.

■ 125 destinations, from 3 m to 8,849 m

• 100 notable peaks across Japan
• From the 3-metre Mount Hiyori in Miyagi to Everest at 8,849 m
• Places that are not mountains: the Great Buddha of Kamakura, Himeji Castle, the Jomon Sugi cedar
• A hidden route that goes down instead of up, for anyone who finishes everything else

The first goal is three meters, which is one flight. You will reach something on the day you begin.

■ A seal for every arrival

Reach the top and a commemorative seal is stamped with the name of the place and the date you arrived. They collect the way stamps collect in a pilgrimage book.

All 125 designs were drawn one at a time. Not one is a template with a different name dropped into it. Turn the pages and no two are alike.

Climb the same place as often as you like. Each date stacks onto the last.

A seal you are fond of can be saved as an image.

■ Your route stays on record

When you began, how many flights on which day, and the moment you finished. Every attempt is kept, for every destination.

The mountain you rushed in three days and the one that took half a year are both there to read back.

■ Something about each place

All 125 entries carry elevation, what to look for, the season to go, and a small piece of trivia, written from scratch. A map shows where each one sits in Japan and around the world.

■ No network. No account.

• The app never connects to the internet
• There is no sign-up
• Records are stored only on your iPhone
• Health data is read, never written
• No ads, no purchases

It works from beginning to end in Airplane Mode.

■ Before you start

• The commemorative seals are always in Japanese. They are drawn as brush-written seals, and translating them would make them something else
• "Flights climbed" is an estimate made by the iPhone's barometer, so it will differ from what you actually climbed
• Values you enter by hand in the Health app do not count. Only what the iPhone actually measured moves your progress
• Without permission to read Health data, the app cannot count anything
• Stairs climbed before you installed the app count toward your lifetime total, but not toward the destination you are climbing now