Naruhodo — Furigana & Japanese Dictionary for Reading

Naruhodo adds furigana (reading annotations) to kanji on any Japanese web page and includes a built-in Japanese-English dictionary with hover lookup — no internet required. Whether you're preparing for JLPT, reading Japanese news, manga, novels, or light novels, Naruhodo helps you read and learn naturally. FEATURES 🔤 Furigana for Any Japanese Web Page Toggle furigana above kanji on any site. Color-coded by JLPT level (N5–N1) so you can focus on words at your level. Use Adaptive mode to automatically hide furigana for words you already know. 🔍 Hover Japanese Dictionary Hold Alt (Option on Mac) and hover over any word for an instant popup with readings, definitions, JLPT level, and pitch accent. Or enable Hover Mode for hands-free lookups. Compound words (like 東京都) are detected automatically — including conjugated verb compounds. Powered by the full JMdict dictionary — 295,000+ entries, all running locally. Pitch accent is drawn as a line over the reading. Select any text and press L to look it up exactly as written. Two small tags show what is worth learning first: 頻出 marks words that recur across real JLPT exam papers, and 常用 marks words common in everyday Japanese text — a word-frequency signal for all five levels, not an exam statistic. 🔊 Native Speaker Audio Pronunciation Hear any word spoken aloud — click the speaker icon or press P. Dictionary words play a native-speaker recording, fetched one word at a time when you press play and then kept on your device. Words are read exactly as they appear on the page (conjugated forms included), using readings from Naruhodo's own dictionary pipeline — a conjugated form is spoken by your device's Japanese voice, since the recording exists for the dictionary form. You can also select a sentence or paragraph and press P to hear the whole thing read aloud. Prefer to stay offline? Switch to "Device voice only" in the toolbar. Words with no recording fall back to your device's Japanese voice, and if your system has no Japanese voice either, Naruhodo stays silent rather than mispronouncing the word. 📖 Example Sentences See real Japanese-English example sentences from Tatoeba for thousands of words, with the target word highlighted. Great for understanding words in context. Every example shows furigana over its kanji, is split into phrases, and any word in it can be tapped to look it up — with a way back. The same readings appear over the examples in particle and grammar cards, and over the sentence saved with each word in your vocab bank and on review cards — and any word in those saved sentences can be looked up and saved right there. 📚 Vocab Bank & Anki Export Save any word with one click. Tag and organize your vocabulary (rename or merge a tag everywhere in one go), filter by JLPT level or by what you already know, group by source page, jump back to the page you found a word on, and export to Anki for flashcard review — a tab-separated file with reading, meaning, JLPT level, pitch accent, the sentence you found the word in, its source page and your tags, that re-imports cleanly on top of an earlier export. Review saved words as flashcards; three hits in a row marks a word Known. ✅ Known Words & Adaptive Learning Mark words as "known" to track your reading progress. Load JLPT presets (N5–N1) to bulk-add words. Adaptive Furigana automatically hides readings for kanji you've already mastered. Forgot one? Press its Known button again on the hover card and the reading comes back, whatever level hid it. 📊 JLPT Learning Stats See your JLPT coverage at a glance, track vocabulary activity over time, and view a difficulty badge showing each page's JLPT breakdown. Know exactly how much of the page you can read. 🌙 Page Dark Mode Switch to dark mode for comfortable night reading. Darkens web pages for easier reading in low light, while keeping furigana colors and images intact. Follows your system theme automatically, force it on, or turn it off entirely — the Auto | Dark | Off toggle sits at the top of the toolbar popup. The same switch sets the look of Naruhodo's own pages. 🗂️ English Glosses for Grammar Short English annotations appear above particles and grammar patterns — 700+ patterns across N5–N1 — so you never lose track of Japanese sentence structure. Perfect for beginners and intermediate learners. Past the basics? Turn on “Follow my JLPT level” and the glosses for the levels you already know go quiet, the way Adaptive furigana does. 📘 Grammar Book A built-in, searchable grammar reference organized by JLPT level — grammar patterns, particles, and functional words, with formation rules and examples. 🌐 Selection Translate Select any Japanese text and click Translate (or press T) for an instant on-device translation. A play button on the translation card reads the original sentence aloud. Uses Chrome's built-in Translation API — no internet, no API keys, completely private. HOW IT WORKS - Full JMdict + JMnedict Japanese-English dictionary (295,000+ entries) runs locally in your browser - KANJIDIC2 character dictionary (10,000+ kanji: readings, meanings, stroke counts) for any lone kanji the word dictionary does not cover — also fully local - Japanese text tokenization by Kuromoji, also running locally - 14,000+ example sentences from the Tatoeba Project - Everyday-usage (常用) tags come from word-frequency data derived from wordfreq (Robyn Speer), CC BY-SA 4.0 - Translation uses Chrome's built-in on-device model — nothing leaves your browser - Pages you read are never sent anywhere — no accounts, no tracking, no analytics. The only network request Naruhodo makes is fetching a word's pronunciation clip when you press play (optional, and off means off). - Word pronunciation plays native-speaker recordings — fetched one word at a time from the JapanesePod101 dictionary audio service when you press play, then cached on your device. Prefer zero network? Switch to "Device voice only" in settings and Naruhodo itself makes no requests at all — pronun…