About
The person behind Wakatta
Wakatta isn’t made by a faceless company. It’s built by one developer who got tired of juggling apps to understand Japanese — and decided to fix it.
Why Wakatta exists
To understand a single word or phrase in a Japanese podcast, I was constantly swapping apps — the player here, a dictionary there, a notes app somewhere else. That back-and-forth is tedious, and it breaks the one thing that actually matters: staying in the listening. Wakatta puts it in one place. Tap any word in a real transcript, see its reading and meaning, save it, and review it later with the original audio — no swapping.
Who I am
I’m Mariano — a software developer with 10+ years of experience who loves building things and picking up new languages. I’m Argentine, currently living in Málaga, Spain, and I built Wakatta myself: the tool I always wished existed while I was learning.
My Japanese (a work in progress)
I’m still learning — no exam badges to wave around (somewhere around N4 on a generous day). I’ve been at it for years, on and off between trips, and I’ve listened to Japanese podcasts the whole way — Nihongo con Teppei was my gateway. That’s exactly why Wakatta is built around real podcasts instead of textbook sentences.
Why Japan
I grew up on anime — Dragon Ball since I was about six — but that’s not what pulled me toward Japan. It was the people, and being able to connect with them while living there. My first trip was in 2017; my wife and I ended up living in Japan for a year on a working-holiday visa, went back in 2023, and keep finding reasons to return. (Also: the food. From ramen to nattō, I’m all in — the omakase counters we found on the last trip were absolutely worth it.)
Why you can trust the meanings
Wakatta doesn’t guess. Word readings and definitions come from Sudachi (a Japanese morphological analyzer) and JMdict (an open Japanese–English dictionary) — deterministic lookups, not an AI improvising. Transcripts are of real podcasts, and every word links back to the audio it came from, so you can always check it with your own ears.
Try the tool I built for myself
Wakatta turns real Japanese podcasts into tappable transcripts — tap any word for its reading and meaning, and review what you save with the original audio.
Soon
