Kikitori — Japanese Listening Tutor

Learn Japanese by watching on netflix.com: sentences with words you don't know yet get a spoken English translation. Unofficial.

Kikitori (聞き取り — "listening comprehension") turns your favorite shows into a Japanese course that fades away as you learn. Watch on netflix.com with Japanese subtitles. When a spoken sentence contains words you don't know yet, Kikitori pauses at the end of the sentence, speaks a natural English translation aloud, replays the Japanese line once, and continues — the "sandwich" method (Japanese → English → Japanese) used by language learners. Every word you hear is tracked with a spaced-repetition memory model (FSRS). Once you've heard a word enough times — and your memory of it is still fresh — sentences made only of words you know play straight through with no English at all. Stop watching for months and words you'd fade on get their translations back automatically. The goal: one day you notice the English is simply gone. Already know some Japanese? Say so once and Kikitori starts from there instead of from zero. Pick your level on the setup page — A1 (JLPT N5) through C1 (N1) — and the vocabulary of that level and every level below it counts as already known, so roughly 700 to 8,100 words are never translated at you. Nothing is frozen: a pre-marked word you never actually hear fades back into the rotation after a couple of months, and one you hear often keeps moving further out. The default assumes nothing about you. — 100% passive: no flashcards, no clicking, no grading. Just watch. — Comprehensible input, automatically: Dynamic difficulty starts by translating sentences with up to 3 new words so you can get going, then tightens toward the ideal — one new word per translated sentence — as your vocabulary grows. — See how the sentence works: while the English is spoken, an optional word-by-word line shows what each Japanese word means in this exact sentence; the words you're learning are highlighted in the subtitles right before each translation. — Netflix's own English subtitles are used for the spoken translation when they faithfully match the Japanese track, so you hear a human translation whenever one exists. — Fully private: subtitles are translated on your device by Chrome's built-in translator; speech uses Chrome's text-to-speech. Nothing you watch ever leaves your browser. — Word list: every word you've encountered, with exposure counts, memory strength, and how many days until its translation would return. — Tune it to taste: pick your English voice, add quiet time between translations, or turn any display feature off — all from the popup or an in-player panel. — One-time setup: nothing to click; on titles without an English track Chrome downloads its offline translation pack once. Requirements: Chrome 138+, a Netflix subscription, Japanese subtitles available on the title. Works on netflix.com. Kikitori is an independent project. It is not endorsed by, affiliated with, or sponsored by Netflix. Requires your own Netflix subscription. ATTRIBUTION Word readings and meanings come from JMdict, © the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, used under CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). The dictionary is redistributed in a modified form: filtered to common entries and trimmed to at most three senses and three glosses per entry. Japanese word segmentation uses Lindera with the IPADIC dictionary (NAIST, BSD-style licence). The JLPT level vocabulary behind the "your Japanese level" head start comes from stephenmk/yomitan-jlpt-vocab: JLPT vocabulary data © CC BY-SA 4.0 Stephen Kraus 2021–2025 (https://github.com/stephenmk/yomitan-jlpt-vocab), derived from Jonathan Waller's JLPT Resources (http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/), used under the Creative Commons BY licence. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. The lists are unofficial — the JLPT publishes no vocabulary lists — and are used as a starting estimate the user can override per word.