Wakaru: Understand Japanese

Wakaru helps you read and reply to Japanese without immediately reaching for a full translation. Most tools translate the whole sentence and move on. Wakaru shows the Japanese as plain, tappable text and lets you work out the meaning yourself first, then check your guess word by word. You remember far more from figuring it out than from reading an instant translation. Two ways to bring Japanese in: • Conversation: paste a message from a chat or a language-exchange partner. • Manga: point your camera at a single speech bubble and capture it. From there, the same simple loop: • Tap any word for an instant dictionary entry and kanji breakdown. • Ask for a sentence-level grammar explanation when something will not click. • Save the words worth keeping with one tap, then send the whole queue to an Anki deck in a single step. Reply one sentence at a time: When you are answering a message, Wakaru helps you build your reply sentence by sentence. Draft a line, optionally check it for grammar, naturalness, and politeness, add it to your reply, and move on to the next. Copy the finished response when you are done. Track your study time: See how much Japanese you are actually doing, from time in the apps you choose to time in calendar lessons and your own quick timers. What's free, and what the AI features cost: The core works offline with no account: Japanese and kanji lookups, the vocabulary queue, and Anki export. Your lookups stay on your device. The AI features (grammar explanations, reply checks, and manga text recognition) need an internet connection and your own OpenRouter API key. You create an account, add a little credit, and pay only for what you use, usually a fraction of a cent per request. Wakaru adds no subscription or markup on top. Wakaru (わかる, "to understand") is built for intermediate learners who want to keep reading real Japanese. It keeps the friction out of the way.