Typing has become such a critical part of our lives. Can you even imagine how much typing you do on a daily basis? Between Facebook, Twitter and email, your little fingers are probably quite busy typing away on the average day. So it only makes sense that if you are practicing a language, you should be able to type in that language as well, right?
These days you have it pretty easy. Before the dawn of Windows, people who wanted to type in Japanese had to type with a kana keyboard. As a matter of fact Japanese keyboards still have kana printed on them, but only older people use them anymore.
Nowadays, you have this handy thing called the IME that does some crazy voodoo magic to allow you to type pretty easily in Japanese. This is actually a little freebie that has been thrown into Windows. It is quite simple to set up and use actually. Click on the start button that glossy windows thing in the lower left corner of your screen and open up the control panel. Under Clock, Language, and Region , click on Change keyboards or other input methods.
You should then see something like the Region and Language menu below. Click on Change keyboards…. Then, you should see something like the following Text Services and Input Languages menu.
The big difference will be that yours will probably not have the Japanese keyboard already installed. My PC has it installed already because I have a physical Japanese keyboard that actually has built in shortcut keys for the Microsoft IME and so when I installed Windows on this machine it just automatically installed the Japanese keyboard along with the Microsoft IME as the default keyboard. In case you were wondering it is a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard , and I highly recommend it if you are going to be doing a lot of typing.
I personally use all of these on a daily basis and highly recommend them. By the way, this is also where you can set the default input language. You can use the IME to type in both Japanese or English as we will see in a bit, so this is a good option to remember.
After you press the Add… button, you should see this Add Input Language menu. The Japanese keyboard only allows you to type in a kana, which as I said before is what older people in Japan use. After doing that, go ahead and click the OK button.
Then click the OK button on the Region and Language menu. And Windows might prompt you for your installation disc, or simply just ask you to log out and back in again depending on your setup. You should see this down in the lower right of your screen hanging out with all your tray icons.
Basically, there are 3 systems of romanization for Japanese: nihon-shiki , kunrei-shiki , and the hepburn system. However, the hepburn system is more widely used for official things. This is generalizing a bit, but the big difference between hepburn and kunrei is that it uses more punctuation to indicate stops, long vowels and such.
It is a little trickier to type in so I would recommend sticking with kunrei. Although, you can use the nihon-shiki system to type with the IME if that is what you are comfortable with. You can open up Wordpad or your favorite word processing app and give it a try. To access Wordpad, you can simply type Wordpad in the search window of the start menu. When it is in this mode, you can type in English like a regular keyboard. Some of the punctuation buttons will be in different places.
You must type a valid kana and then it will automatically switch to the kana. Now if you hit enter , it will simply leave the kana as is. If you want to use the kanji, you have to hit the space bar. If you hit the space bar again, you will see a pop up menu where you can select the kanji that you want to use.
Note, this is also the way you can get katakana without having to select it in the IME. Some kana have several kanji available for them. If the kanji or often confused they have similar meanings, same pronunciation, but different kanji then there are notes available to help you differentiate.
Unfortunately these notes are in Japanese:. It should be here on your keyboard:. These shortcuts allow you to rapidly switch between typing in English and in Japanese, which is handy if you are say practicing vocabulary on memrise or filling out a form for a Japanese website.
I should also note that the Microsoft IME will remember what you are using in what window. So, for example, if you are typing in Japanese in Wordpad, you should be able to switch to Firefox and type in English without changing it in the IME. Did I miss something? Did you have problems setting up the IME? Do you like hearing about cool stuff? Me, too! Sign up for the newsletter! Do you like to party? Then try joining my Facebook Page for all the latest updates.
Photo by Tamaki Sono. That looks pretty cool. I use Google IME too. Great introduction to the IME on Windows 7. I think, unless one has a real Japanese keyboard, this is a topic everybody will worry about at some point. One can write Kanji and Kana with a mouse or pen on a tablet pc :- , and thus write look up Kanji without knowing their read-ings.
I used to be a heavy user of that feature when I started learning Japanese. I remember some Apple video with Chinese Input via Trackpad. I would also like to mention that it is possible to change the keyboard shortcuts of the Windows IME to more suitable one.
I have installed the language as per the instructions given by you. However, it gets converted to a Japanese keyboard and I am not able to type in English and then change it to Japanese. Please help me. Could you please tell me how to only have hiragana appear after I space the words?
So you just want to type hiragana? You can just hit enter after every piece of the sentence you type, then hit the space bar. If you click that it should revert back. Or maybe, you might have to select it as keyboard from the keyboard menu. Does that make sense?
Just wanted to thank you — I had the exact same problem as Alice above, and had no idea how to fix it until I ran across your site. I was wondering if you ever tried to type in outlook with japanese ime? It gives me some box with a green arrow to insert directly into the body after i type. It only happens in html formatted emails and not RTF. Know of any way to get rid of this box and type straight into the body like Word? My guess is that you can try to switch back to the standard one somehow?
Hi Ryan, did you ever solve this problem? If so, do you remember how. That sounds like a privileges problem. For example, you installed the IME as the administrator, but you are trying to run it as a regular user. Do you know how Windows 7 registry is modified by the IME setting? My son is studying Japanese at school and installed Japanese fonts and keyboard mapping. We can switch back and forth now. However, even when we return to English some system is coming up Japanese.
For instance when I change the volume the text is in Japanese. The slash between directories is no longer a slash but a Japanese Yen sign. How do I go back? You should see a window like this:. I think you might be using the Office IME. The Microsoft IME should work in all programs. But, I heard office has its own IME. Everything is working fine, however the only issue I am facing is that it does not remember the last word I have used.
For example, when you type anything in Japanese it shows some suggestions press space bar to you and when you type the same work again, It should automatically change to the work you have last chosen, Which in my case is not working. Any Suggestions please.
While you have Hiragana, full- and half-width Katakana, full- and half-width Alphanumeric, I have full-width and normal Alphanumeric, half-width and normal Katakana and Hiragana. I almost always use just the hiragana setting. Sometimes, you have to use full-width alphanumeric for poorly programmed web forms though like if you have to register for online banking in Japan or something like that. I have the windows IME set up on two machines, using it to test a customer software. On one machine I get characters as soon as I type — on the other machine only after pressing enter the field remains empty and the cursor does not move while typing until enter is pressed, and then I get the full word at once.
For the life of me I cannot find which setting controls the difference between the two behaviors. Any ideas? That sounds like what happens in a Java app, like Gimp or OpenOffice. But on the XP machine it worls fine for all setting no conversions, speech bias, name bias, etc. Hi Clayton, I began studying Japanese on Memrise with your courses.
However if I hit the spacebar nothing happens, except a space, but the N stays the same. Or, which is even worse, a part of the word I typed before in Hiragana or Katakana changes into kanji, so I get another wrong answer or I run out of time. What is it with this N??? Thank you. Thanks for using the courses! Thank you so much, I just found this problem while I was actually making notes from memrise for a friend since they have a slight interest.
I have a big problem writing Japanese with Paint! I asked my boyfriend to type something for me, he pressed some keys and since then it doesnt work the same as before! Short lessons. Real-life phrases. Everything you need to go from learning to speaking, fast. Memrise is for real. Real language, real people, real accents. We help you get ready for the real world, wherever that may be for you - connecting with friends and family over Zoom, getting ready for travel, upskilling for your career or learning during your free time.
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We get an awesome sense of progress every time we use it. Memrise is really good! One of the best features is it has video of natives saying the words. You can keep repeating the video until you have really understood the words.
This helped immensely in my Japanese lessons. They recently added video of writing the hiragana and katakana. Oh, and to top it off, you can download the lessons so they will be available offline.
I really can study anywhere. This app beats the others, in my opinion by a long shot. I would recommend it to everyone trying to learn Japanese!!! Go Memrise!!! Hi StingraeC, Thank you for your feedback! We love you're enjoying Memrise. If the "robots" sound very human is because they are!
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