I’m a Level 60 WaniKani user. But even after mastering the Kanji and vocabulary, I found that my listening comprehension was still lagging way behind. I could read the words, but I couldn’t “hear” them in real-time.
That’s why I created Kikikata - an SRS-based listening app.
The concept is simple: You hear a sentence and type what you hear. The main difference from other apps? If you mishear a specific word, you can add that individual word to your SRS and learn it separately until you can recognize it back in the full sentence.
I posted here a while ago and received a ton of great feedback. I’m happy to share that many of those suggestions are now live:
Dual Study Modes: Choose between Text Input (dictation) or a Simple Mode (correct/incorrect) for faster reviews.
Karaoke-Style Tracking: The text highlights in real-time as the audio plays.
Context & Grammar: Every sentence now includes Politeness Levels, Cultural Context, and tagged Grammar Points.
Speed Control: Adjustable playback for audio.
Total UI Overhaul: A completely new look focused on a smooth, distraction-free study flow
If your listening is lagging behind your reading, I’d love for you to give it a try and share your feedback!
Not only got all my answers wrong despite typing the exact sentence, but everytime I 変換 with space I have to have the audio spam repeated. It wasnt until later i realized it only works with romaji input
By default, the site is set up for Kana-only input with Space as the audio trigger (which is usually easier for beginners). However, if you’re already comfortable with an IME, you can actually toggle it into a more advanced mode.
If you click the Session Settings (top-left corner), you can enable:
Kanji-Based Input: This will check your typed text against the actual Kanji instead of just the Kana.
Audio Hotkey (Backtick `): This moves the audio trigger from space key to the backtick key. Since the backtick isn’t used by the Japanese IME for character conversion, it’s fully compatible and prevents the audio from replaying every time you hit Space to convert your text.
Thank you again for the feedback! I’ll look into making these options more discoverable for experienced users.
I’ve just pushed an update to address the main pain points reported by the community:
Global Settings: You can now access Session Settings directly from the main Settings page - no need to be in a lesson to change your setup.
Smart Input Detection: The app now detects if you’re typing Kanji while in Kana-mode and will warn you immediately so you can switch settings without losing your flow.
“Zen Mode” Options: Added toggles to Reduce Animations and disable Karaoke Highlighting for a cleaner, more focused study experience.
Better Organization: Settings are now clearly grouped into Audio, Input, and Visual sections.
IME Compatibility: A reminder that you can switch the Audio Hotkey to Backtick (`) in settings to avoid Spacebar conflicts during IME conversion.
Hi, @qehbr. I’m late to this thread, but I just happened to stumble upon Kikikata (through either the WK forums or the Bunpro forums—I can’t recall), and although I’ve only just started trying it, the quality is super impressive! I (like many others) work best with SRS tools, but I never thought to search for a listening one. I’ll continue to use it and probably snag a subscription. Your responsiveness to community suggestions is also a huge plus!
Only two small notes from me so far, since I haven’t used it much yet:
I noticed that the first time a Kikikata sound file is played (via autoplay), its volume is automatically “softened” at the very beginning of playback, which makes it difficult to understand the first part of the spoken word or sentence. This may not actually be Kikikata’s doing—it may just be a “user experience” feature of whatever audio hardware I’m using—but just in case, I figured I’d mention it.
However, because of that quirk, I found myself needing to replay each Kikikata audio file at least once, because for whatever reason, only the autoplays get auto-softened for me, not any replays after it. This made me realize there’s no way to turn off autoplay and have Kikikata only play audio when I tell it to (via input). So having that option—to turn off audio autoplay—could be handy.
Thanks for all your work on this site! You’ve gained a fan.
Edit: I just enabled Auto-play After Answer, and those autoplays also seem to have softened (difficult to hear) volume at the beginning of their playback.
Hi! Thank you so much for the kind words and the detailed notes.
On the clipped start: I’m pretty sure this isn’t Kikikata’s audio itself, but Bluetooth (or some audio devices) dropping into a low-power idle state when there’s no sound for a few seconds. When playback starts again, the device takes a fraction of a second to wake up and fades in during that window, which eats the start of the audio. I have a couple of ideas for mitigating it (keeping the audio device “awake” during a session, or padding the clips), so I’ll experiment and see what works best across devices.
I can register / log in, but the site doesn’t load properly. That’s also without any plug-ins.
This is at least the case with the Dashboard, course/words and course/sentences pages.
The progress, search, doc and community do appear to work properly.
Sorry for the runaround on this. The actual cause: Kikikata uses Google reCAPTCHA to verify that requests come from real people (not bots scraping the lesson content) before showing the site’s data. Firefox’s “Enhanced Tracking Protection” classifies reCAPTCHA as a tracker and silently blocks it, which makes every page on the site appear broken even though you’re logged in correctly.
Quick temporary fix: click the shield icon to the left of kikikata.app in your address bar and turn off Enhanced Tracking Protection for the site, then refresh. (Or try Chrome / Edge to confirm it’s only Firefox.).
On data: outside of Firebase (which stores your account and learning progress) and reCAPTCHA (which just checks “is this a real user”), we don’t pass any data anywhere during normal use of the site. The few other third parties listed in our Privacy Policy only come into play when you specifically interact with them (PayPal if you subscribe etc.) reCAPTCHA itself is a Google service and follows their privacy policy.
I’m working on a more reliable solution that doesn’t require this workaround in Firefox. Thanks for the detailed report!
Thanks for testing that, it confirmed exactly what we needed.
We’ve made two changes on our side:
We’ve relaxed the bot check so that privacy-protective setups like yours pass. You should no longer need to disable Enhanced Tracking Protection, use a private window, or change anything at all.
The site now shows a clear error message instead of loading forever if anything like this ever happens again, so nobody has to debug this blindly.
Thanks again! Your case uncovered a problem that was silently affecting other users too
I can confirm that everything works as expected now. That’s on my usual Firefox setup with the Enhanced Tracking Protection enabled and a bunch of privacy add-ons on top.
Hi, this is now fixed. There’s now an opt-in setting, “Keep Bluetooth Awake” - it plays an almost-inaudible tone during the session so your headphones never doze off, and audio starts cleanly every time. It’s off by default since it only helps on Bluetooth. Full details on our forum: https://kikikata.flarum.cloud/
