A free Japanese to romaji converter that handles real sentences, not just kana. Paste any Japanese text — kanji, hiragana or katakana — and this romaji translator reads it with a morphological analyzer and outputs Hepburn romaji, word by word. Particles are romanized the way they are pronounced (は→wa, へ→e, を→o). Everything runs in your browser: your text never leaves your device.
🔒 Conversion happens entirely on your device — your text is never uploaded. (The first conversion downloads a Japanese dictionary from a CDN, which may take a few seconds.)
| Style | 東京 (とうきょう) | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Hepburn (macrons) | Tōkyō | Textbooks, dictionaries, linguistics — preserves pronunciation exactly |
| Hepburn (plain) | Tokyo | Everyday English text, place names, sign-style spelling |
| Spelled-out | Toukyou | Mirrors kana spelling — matches how you type Japanese on a keyboard (wāpuro style) |
Hepburn is the most widely used system for writing Japanese with the Latin alphabet. It spells sounds the way English speakers expect to read them: し is "shi" (not "si"), ち is "chi", つ is "tsu", ふ is "fu". You will find Hepburn on Japanese road signs, train station names, passports, and in virtually every textbook and dictionary for learners. The main alternative, Kunrei-shiki, is taught in Japanese elementary schools but is rarely used for learner materials.
It is a spelling quirk of Japanese itself. When は is used as the topic particle (as in これはペンです), it is pronounced "wa", not "ha". Likewise the direction particle へ is pronounced "e", and the object particle を is pronounced "o". Romaji reflects pronunciation, so this converter writes them as wa, e and o — but only when they really are particles. Inside a word (like the は in こんにちは, which historically comes from a particle and is pronounced "wa" too) the word's own pronunciation is used.
A macron is the small bar over a vowel, as in Tōkyō or Kyūshū. It marks a long vowel — a vowel held for two beats instead of one. In kana, these long vowels are usually spelled with an extra う (とうきょう) or a prolonged sound mark (コーヒー). Vowel length matters in Japanese: おばさん (obasan, aunt) and おばあさん (obāsan, grandmother) are different words. If you cannot type macrons, use the "Hepburn (plain)" style, which simply drops them, or the "Spelled-out" style, which writes the long vowel the way the kana spell it (toukyou).
It depends on what the romaji is for. Hepburn with macrons is the standard in textbooks, dictionaries and academic writing — use it if you want to preserve pronunciation. Hepburn plain (no macrons) matches how Japanese words usually appear in English text (Tokyo, Osaka, judo) and is the safest choice for everyday writing. Spelled-out long vowels (toukyou) mirror the kana spelling exactly, which is how you type Japanese on a keyboard — handy for learning kana spellings or for text you plan to type back into an IME.