Japanese keyboards?!!?

Question

My dad just got back from Japan on Friday night and he bought me a japanese computer.

But, I can't seem to figure out the keyboard ><"

How do I change it from hiragana to kanji, and katakana and GAOHFLAJ

Explain pleaaaaaaaase. Everytime I went to Japan, I always used my laptop. So i have no experience whatsoever

Answer 1

Is your Japanese computer Windows JP version? If so, you can type Japanese easily.

Type "sennsei" for "せんせい" and press space key. You will find "先生" (teacher).
Type "mikann" for "みかん", press space key or F7, you will find Katakana "ミカン" (orange)
Type "nn" for "ん".
Type "wo" for the particle "を".


If yours is English version, you need East Asian Language setting.
http://www.nihongo-ok.com/

Type Japanese in Wordpad or Microdoft Word. Notepad doesn't accept Japanese.

Answer 2

There's the kind that you saw. Those weren't Japanese "symbols", but Japanese letters, probably hiragana. Japanese has a phonetic alphabet like English, called "hiragana". There is another way of writing the same sounds, called "katakana." Some people enter words on a keyboard by using these letters as they're written on the keyboard. Another way is to use the alphabet, which is called "romaji" in Japanese. You can enter the sound per the alphabet. So, you're entering hiragana, katakana, or romaji, then once you've done that, the software in the computer gives you the option of choosing kanji that match those sounds. Kanji are the more complex characters, originally from Chinese. For example, I've got my keyboard here. I type in: ki However, I'm in Japanese mode, so it comes out like: き　　(hiragana) Now, if I hit the space bar, it's going to give me options for words that have the sound "ki" (き) 気、木、着、機、etc. Japanese has many homonyms (words that sound the same). You choose the correct character, then hit enter. This is how you can type hundreds and hundreds of different Japanese characters without having a massive keyboard.

Answer 3

If you're using a Japanese version of windows, then you should have an IME of some sort. The computers at school have a small toolbar usually somewhere near the bottom of the page. It's a couple of inches long and grey. There is a button you can click that will let you change the input method (or type in straight English), usually on the left-hand side of the toolbar. There is usually a little part in color (lavender?) that you can click to switch to alpha-numeric.

The keyboard can probably be configured to type either the typical qwerty keyboard, or the Japanese style, so that can probably be changed depending on which you prefer (there is probably a button on the keyboard itself somewhere to do this).

Otherwise, once you get the toolbar sorted out, it works as the person before said. You type the letters (either in spelled out the roman way--sensei for せんせい, or the Japanese way in which you can type a single key for a single hiragana character) and it will automatically change to either hiragana or katakana. You hit the space bar to choose which kanji to use.

Hopefully this makes sense. If I could attach screencaps of what I mean, I would.

Answer 4

You need software that matches the keyboard. The hiragana are not going turn into kanji just because you have a JIS keyboard. If you search on line you can probably find a Japanese word processor with English documentation that you can download as shareware. Install that, and your Windows Japanese language kit and you should have a bilingual computer.