理解·rikai
Understand Japanese.
Anywhere.
A learning assistant that lives on your iPhone. It reads with you — words, readings, grammar, pitch — and your questions never leave the device.
In the app
Reading, understood.
Dictionary · Grammar
Tap a word, get the whole story
Reading, pitch, meaning, part of speech — and the grammar, matched from every level N5 through N1 and pinned to the exact words it explains. The sentence on the right is live: touch any word and you're looking at the view the app opens.
、。
Hover, tap, or tab through the words.
この
この ［0］
this (one close to me)
pre-noun adjectival · 連体詞
Ask Rikai
この vs これ — what changed? Which one: この, その, or あの?本
ほん ［1］
book; volume
noun · counted with 冊（さつ）
Ask Rikai
How do I count books? When is 本 read もと?読んで
よんで · 読む ［1］
to read — in its て-form, reaching for みたい
godan verb · transitive
Ask Rikai
Why 読んで and not 読みて? Show me more て-form verbsみたい
〜てみる ＋ 〜たい
want to try — 読んでみたい: “I want to try reading it”
two grammar points, matched as one
Ask Rikai
Is this the “looks like” みたい? How would I say “I tried reading it”?な
a soft wish, said half to yourself
particle · sentence-final
Ask Rikai
Would ね work here instead? When does な turn into an order?Camera
Point it at real Japan
This morning's paper, tonight's menu, the sign you can't parse — snap it and rikAI lifts the text straight off the page, every word as tappable as the sentence above. The photo stays on the device with everything else.
単語カード·sentence mining
Mine the sentence you're
already reading.
The word you tap becomes the card you'd have built by hand — dictionary form, reading, pitch accent, every sense, the sentence it came from — and it's in AnkiMobile before the panel closes. Your deck, your note type, your field mapping, your tags: every piece of the card is yours to reroute, rename, or turn off.
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ReadFurigana over the kanji, the English underneath, and the grammar points already matched — here, 〜てしまう at N4.
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TapReading, pitch accent, meaning — and one button that sends the whole thing to your deck. The card is in AnkiMobile before the panel closes.
What lands on the card
- The wordin dictionary form, not the conjugation you tapped
- The readingas ruby over the front, a line on the back, or off
- Pitch accentthe drop number, in its own field
- The meaningevery JMdict sense, not just the first
- The sentencethe one you found it in, for context on the back
Your collection, your rules
- Deck & note typeany deck, any note type you already study
- Field mappingyou name the field each piece goes into
- Tagswhatever your workflow expects
- Duplicate checkrikAI reads your collection and stops repeats
機内モード·airplane mode
Local explanations.
No internet required.
The model, the dictionary, all grammar points, the pitch data — everything ships inside the app. Switch the radio off and Rikai still reads the sign, breaks the sentence apart, and explains why it's が and not は. Nothing queues up for later, because nothing was going anywhere.
- 47words looked up today
- 12grammar notes read
- 0requests sent
No account. No sync. No telemetry. Your data is completely private — rikAI will never collect it. Works on the subway, on the plane, and in the parts of Japan where your carrier gives up.
比べる·the alternatives
Why not just use what
you already have?
Fair question. Here's where the tools most learners already own stop, and what's left over.
| rikAI | DeepL | Yomitan | Manabi | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Explains the grammar, not just the word | ||||
| Ask follow-up questions | ||||
| Everything runs on the device | ||||
| Works on iPhone | ||||
| Camera text you can tap | ||||
| One-tap Anki without a desktop |
はじめに·why this exists
Teaching myself Japanese gave me a thorough love-hate relationship with Anki — and a running list of things I wished existed. I was tired of waiting on Jisho for every lookup, tired of writing every card by hand, tired of tools that could tell me what a word meant but never why the sentence worked. rikAI is that list, finally built.
— Ryan, rikAI
Coming to iPhone & iPad · no account, no cloud