Wakarimasuka? - Another Listening app

[KatuGT]

Hi everyone!

I recently got back into studying Japanese and realized how hard it was to jump from textbooks to understanding real conversations. While I’m aware there are other similar tools out there, I felt inspired to build my own from the ground up. It’s been a passion project—partly for the fun of it, but mostly as a way to merge my love for the language with my growth as a developer..

How does the practice area work? It’s not just about watching a clip; it’s about active participation:

• Simple Input: When typing what you hear, you’ll only see Hiragana. No need to worry about Kanji or Katakana; the goal is to focus on the sound!
• No distractions: Don’t worry about punctuation or spaces; the system ignores them automatically so they don’t affect your score.
• Segmented Replay: Each sentence has its own dedicated replay button, allowing you to listen to that specific snippet as many times as you need.
• Extra help: If you’re feeling stuck, you can reveal the translation at any time to guide you along.

A quick note on language: Although the website’s interface is in Spanish, it’s very visual and intuitive (icons, clear buttons). The core experience is all about the Japanese audio and text!

I’d love to get your feedback on it: https://wakarimasuka.vercel.app/

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Summary

P.S.: I’m currently looking for a job as a Web Developer. If you like the tool and happen to be on LinkedIn, I’d be incredibly grateful if you could drop a “Like” or a comment on my post there to help with its reach! LinkedIn Post

[straille]

finally, a tool made without the use of ai (at least, as far as i can tell…)
it looks useful, too~
i was going to offer help for more clips, but i doubt my japanese is sufficient enough xD

[KatuGT]

Sorry to disappoint you, but I did build it with AI haha. I mean, I was a developer before AI, but nowadays it is almost a MUST

About the subs, I have a “trick”. I have a simple and small app that gives you the file with the text and timing of the clip of your choice. It is not perfect, so how can I make sure that the file is correct?

If we are talking about an anime series or movie, I go to Japanese Netflix (using a VPN), so I can see the Japanese subtitles and compare.

But with anything else that is not anime, you can’t do that. Music is the worst haha. The app I told you about does not work, so I have to search for the lyrics and adjust the timing manually.

[straille]

oh, that’s unfortunate
i have to disagree, it is not “a must”
if someone like me is able to find solutions to problems without resorting to ai, i feel like anyone should be
there are plenty of resources for learning code, even if it’s less “learning” and more “here’s how someone else did something similar, what info can i glean from this for my own uses?” (which is still likely to lead to learning something)

edit: you even said you have to do things manually, so what’s the ai for, anyway?

[KatuGT]

@straille

edit: you even said you have to do things manually, so what’s the ai for, anyway?

Well, about this

• I build the website with AI
• there is a small integration at the admin panel for the traduction japanese to spanish, this one wasn´t necessary but I just wanted to try, I never integrated an AI before
• to get the substitle in japanese, I use “Whisper AI”, but it suck if you try to get the subtitle from music videos, this is where I have to work almas “manually”