[2] Playing for the Unisys team with her regular partner Misaki Matsutomo in the women's doubles, she won five National Championships titles.

[4] They won numerous international titles, including the year-end tournament finals in 2014 and 2018; the historical All England Open in 2016; the Olympic Games in 2016; and also the Asian Championships in 2016 and 2017.

[2][5] The duo won the Badminton World Federation's Female Player of the Year award in 2016.

Takahashi and Matsutomo became the first pair from outside China to win the women's Olympic doubles title since the 1996 Atlanta Games, giving Japan its second medal in the event after Mizuki Fujii and Reika Kakiiwa took silver at the 2012 London Olympic Games.

In 2020, Ayaka announced that she had married Yuki Kaneko, a teammate in both the Japanese national and Unisys teams.