How to Teach Your Computer to Read and Write Japanese!

If you are using Windows XP, it is very easy to enable your computer to write in Japanese. There is a very good tutorial here.

If you have a Windows operating system prior to XP, you might not be able to read Japanese characters on your computer because you haven't installed Global IME. This is a piece of software your browser needs to recognize non-English characters. (If you are using Netscape, you probably won't have any luck. Internet Explorer is the recommended browser. Download it at this link.)

Reading Japanese Characters

You can download Global IME for free at this site. (Shortcut: Go to this page if your computer runs on Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows 95, or Windows NT 4.0; go to this page if your computer runs on Office XP. Make sure to select Global IME for Japanese.)

Once you have it on your hard drive, double-click on it to install it, and then re-boot your machine. This will enable your computer automatically decode Japanese characters it displays. If you are still having trouble, go the View menu at the top of your browser and select Encoding; in Encoding, select Japanese (auto-select).

Writing Japanese Characters

Open a Microsoft Word file. A dark-blue square with the letters En should appear on the task bar at the lower right of your screen. Single-click on that and select Japanese IME. This will create a a three-box rectangle. Single-click on the "A" in the box on the left, and select the top option from the six that pop up. Voila! That should enable you to enter Japanese text by using Roman characters. Try writing hiragana and kanji by going through the following steps.

• Key in the letters T O U K Y O U.
• These will come out in hiragana (とうきょう) and be highlighted (underlined).
• If you want to convert the hiragana to kanji, press the space bar. You should get the kanji for Tokyo: 東京. To de-highlight that, press the return/enter key.

 Now try writing katakana.

• Key in the letters M A K U D O N A R U D O.
• These will come out as highlighted hiragana (まくどなるど), as before.
• This hiragana can now be converted to katakana by either of two means: (1) press the space bar (because the program recognizes that McDonalds is a foreign word that should be written in katakana) or (2) press the F7 key at the top of your keyboard. The space bar will only convert to katakana words that the program recognizes, while the F7 key will convert anything to katakana. Does it now say マクドナルド?

How to get small TSU, YA, YU, and YO:

• You can either type "x" before TSU, YA, YU, and YO or use the appropriate ROOMAJI: CHOTTO for ちょっと, SHASHIN for しゃしん, SHINJUKU for しんじゅく.

To get a TSU with a TENTEN (づ & ヅ), type DU.

Global IME Boxes

Of the three boxes that first appear after selecting "Japanese IME," the box on the left enables the user to select the input mode. From the top, these are:

1. two-byte hiragana (ZENKAKU HIRAGANA)
2. two-byte katakana (ZENKAKU KATAKANA)
3. two-byte English & numbers (ZENKAKU EISUU)
4. one-byte katakana (HANKAKU KATAKANA)
5. one-byte English & numbers (HANKAKU EISUU)
6. straight English (CHOKUSETSU NYUURYOKU)

Numbers 1 through 5 give highlighted text that can be converted. Number 6 is just standard English without highlighting or converting.

The middle box is properties and the box on the right is the Global IME help file.