For Japanese learners
How romaji is written here
So that you can sing along before you can read furigana, Think Songs can print romaji above the lyrics. There are several competing romanization styles, and the same word ends up spelled differently in each. This page explains which rules this site follows, and why we chose them.
Last updated: 2026-09-02
The base is Hepburn
We use Hepburn romanization. Its spellings are closer to English pronunciation, so people who have just started learning Japanese find them easier to say out loud. The main differences from Kunrei-shiki show up in the rows below.
| Hepburn (this site) | Kunrei-shiki |
|---|---|
| し → shi／しゃ → sha | し → si／しゃ → sya |
| ち → chi／ちゃ → cha | ち → ti／ちゃ → tya |
| つ → tsu | つ → tu |
| ふ → fu | ふ → hu |
| じ → ji／じゃ → ja | じ → zi／じゃ → zya |
The particles は, へ and を are written as they sound: wa, e and o. This is a reading aid for singing, not a spelling exercise.
An apostrophe after n
The most noticeable thing about our spelling is the apostrophe that follows ん. It is not decoration — it is there to remove a genuine ambiguity.
きんようび → kin'youbi （kinyoubi だと「き・にょ・う・び」とも読める） たんい → tan'i （tani だと「たに」とも読める） ほんや → hon'ya （honya だと「ほ・にゃ」とも読める）
When a vowel or y follows n, the spelling alone cannot tell you whether that n is ん or the start of a na-row syllable. The apostrophe settles exactly that one question.
There are places we leave it out.Where no misreading is possible, we leave it out. Fewer marks read more easily.
| Left out | Why |
|---|---|
| はんな → hanna | Before a na-row syllable. っ never precedes the na row, so nna can only be ん + な |
| しんぶん → shinbun | Before b, m or p. Modified Hepburn sometimes changes this to m, but we keep n |
| ほん → hon | At the end of a word. Nothing follows, so there is nothing to confuse |
No macrons for long vowels
Some styles write とうきょう as Tōkyō; we write toukyou. We simply repeat the vowel letter.
とうきょう → toukyou （Tōkyō とは書かない） おかあさん → okaasan ラーメン → raamen （長音符「ー」も母音を重ねる）
The reason is that using a macron requires deciding whether a given おう is a long vowel, and that cannot be determined from the kana alone.
思う おもう → omou （「お」＋「もう」ではない。omō にすると誤り） 王 おう → ou （こちらは長音）
The same おう is a long vowel in some words and not in others. Telling them apart requires knowing where the word boundaries are, and when a machine gets that wrong the result is not merely hard to read — it teaches the wrong reading. That would trade one ambiguity for a different error, so we do not do it.
Small っ doubles the next consonant
The geminate consonant is written by doubling the consonant that follows. Only the chi row takes a different shape.
がっこう → gakkou きって → kitte ざっし → zasshi こっち → kotchi （cchi ではなく tchi）
Grouped by word
Romaji is grouped by word, not by timing unit. The two are not the same thing.
悲しい光 区切らないと kanashi i hikari 語でまとめると kanashii hikari
When 悲しい carries furigana, the lyrics file may hold 悲し and い as two separate units. Printed as they are, the word appears to break in the middle, which defeats the purpose of a reading aid. So we join only the boundaries that fall inside a word, making it one piece.
We never join across a word boundary: 光を stays hikari o. Keeping particles separate makes it visible where one word ends.
Where it falls short
Romaji is generated from the furigana (kana). If there is no furigana, there is no romaji — which is why a line of bare kanji gets none.
And if the furigana is wrong, the romaji is wrong too. The readings attached to a song were entered by whoever posted it, so proper nouns and creative kanji readings sometimes miss. If you spot one, please tell us through “Report a problem” on that song.
Turning it on
Romaji is switched on and off in Display settings. Open a song, tap the gear at the top right, then open Advanced settings. You can show it together with furigana — furigana above the kanji, romaji above that.
The apps for iPhone, Android, Mac and Windows follow the same rules. The conversion rules are kept identical across every platform, so opening the same lyrics on another device never changes the spelling.