How to enable Japanese display and typing ability in Windows XP

[zhek]

Assuming you have your Windows XP disc handy, or did a full install including the installation files for Windows, then...

1. Open your control panel, and open Regional and Language Options.

2. Make sure the install files for East Asian languages box is checked.

You can have the box above it checked, but I don't think it matters all that much.

3. Click details.


4. Screen should look like this. I've got a few extra things on their you probably don't have, but don't worry about it.


5. Click add.


6. Set the input to Japanese, and it should have Microsoft IME as default in the next box. Hit Ok.


7. Hit Language Bar.


8. I have all the options selected, but just make sure show up on desktop is.


Hit ok till you're clear of the whole menu. It'll ask you for your disc if you don't have the files already setup.

Now you have a language bar, it looks like this:


8. In order to type in Japanese, make sure you have whatever program you want up front, and that it supports japanese. Notepad does, Trillian does, Photoshop does, many programs do. AIM doesn't, and I imagine many others also don't.

Click English and select Japanese:


9. It'll switch some options. Now, you hit Input Mode and select what you want to type in.

Hirigana for that, Katakana for that, Direct Input for regular English, and some other options if you want to use those. To type out Kanji, select anything but the alpha and Direct Input options (I usually use hirigana and katanana) and type out the word you want. For example, "aki", which is Autumn.

So, you type out aki, and it'll have it in hirigana, or whatever: あき。Then hit space. It should pop up a little side menu, and you can select what you want it represented as, various kanji, hirigana, katakana, etc. The correct kanji for "aki" is　秋. So I'd select it from the list. My impression is that japanese use this method for typing, but I've never seen it done beyond the GTO movie, so I'm not exactly a reliable source on that. I use a dictionary to look up words, and a kanji lookup to confirm useage: http://dict.regex.info/cgi-bin/j-e/jis/dict

There you go. Posted on 6.0, but I figure it's interesting to see as a tutorial here. This works for any language, as you can see I had Chinese enabled too. I understand the phonetics of Japanese, and Chinese doesn't even have phontics, but other languages are likely just as easy to type.

[_TAKA]

Excuse me...
So if I am correct, should you answer me what I wrote here to see if I had written it correctly?

たか

I know what it typed in English... since I typed it. But just to make sure that I did everything correctly, please tell me what it reads. If you are correct about what I wrote, then that means I followed the instructions correctly and I can write Japanese words. =D

[zhek]

I have no idea what it says. I get how things are pronunced in Japanese (like, I would probably romanize things ok to be converted into something else), but I have no clue what they mean.

It's uh... some squiggly hirigana. That's about what I get.

[Kenshiro]

I saw it. Very nicely done. XD

And this is a good tutorial too. I was using NJStar, but it was a free trial, so I'm going to see if this works. My XP was pre-installed, though, so I'm not crossing my fingers...

EDIT: Never mind, it's working. Thanks for the tutorial! I wasn't even aware I could do this.

[shungokusatsu]

Useful shortcuts that are most likely preset:
Alt + Shift should cycle between the installed languages.
Alt + ` (The key that is to the left of 1) for Japanese to toggle direct input commands on/off.

There can also be a handwriting recognition, but it works if the each stroke of each character is in correct order and what type of stroke. This is not recommended for people who don't know how to draw Japanese/Chinese/Korean characters.

[Arimasen]

度も有賀と、zhekーさん。

[maruchan_192000]

Originally Posted by Arimasen

度も有賀と、zhekーさん。

I think domo arigato was just written out in Hiragana? not Kanji..

but yes thanks for this, I got it to work on my other computer but it was a bitch on this one