Japanese Keyboard (?)

[AhmedHan]

I really wonder what a kind of keyboard Nihonjin people use.

[Carlson]

the same kind you use. it just has the Hirigana symbols along with the letters...

[J44xm]

This rather confuses me. How are hiragana characters mapped to the alphabet? Do they actually type in roomaji?

[GaijinPunch]

Do they actually type in roomaji?

Yes, there's a [software] IME that handles the kana/kanji conversion. It's actually quite efficient, and you don't have to learn how to type two different character sets.

The keyboard is slightly different though.... about as different as a US an UK keyboard are. Want to confuse your british friends in Japan. This will require you to touch-type (ie - not look at the keys) Get a Japanese keyboard, but set it up as a US-English (101) keyboard. If you don't look at the keys (which you shouldn't) it doesn't matter. Have your English friends come over and type an email.

[Mandylion]

Just for reference - my keyboard.

You can choose to type in either romaji or direct into hiragana (note the at least dual use on most keys) - kanji achieved by pressing the space key after typing in a word or phrase and working down a list of possible options if your desired characters are not the most common for that kana combination.

[GaijinPunch]

The only time I've ever seen the directo-kana input method used is for special katakana/hiragana fonts.

[pipokun]

The input method, romaji v. kana, has been a long lasting debate which is better among Japanese.
Now romaji input method is more dominant, I bet more than 90% choose romaji method and actually I do, but kids are now learning kana method at their elementary schools.

[Kinsao]

Thanks for the infos, Mandylion - I knew about the kana keyboard existence but had no idea how kanji were typed in... :relief:

[GaijinPunch]

I bet more than 90% choose romaji method

I'm with ya. I've worked in a few different offices in japan... some with 300+ people. From what I gathered, romaji was the way.

[Hiroyuki Nagashima]

I do the KANA input:relief:
The KANA input is the minority:(
ROMAJI is hard to beat against a long sound and a consonant.
As for IME, learning function developed
IME displays expensive kanji and prose of use frequency with precedence
IME became convenient.

A digression
I am still weak in the Japanese input of a cellular phone:hey:

[Kinsao]

Hi - I wonder if anyone can help me. :?

What program do I need to use, to input hiragana and katakana but using a regular UK English keyboard?

[MeAndroo]

Hi - I wonder if anyone can help me. :?

What program do I need to use, to input hiragana and katakana but using a regular UK English keyboard?

Well you could always use a free program like JStar and cut n paste, but I suppose the best way is to use the IME in Windows...assuming of course, that you USE windows.

In response to the topic, not only is romaji used, but some people can become a little confused when faced with the prospect of only using the kana keys. My host family's computer was acting kind of wonky and instead of using the roman letters on the keys, it'd only use the kana. Naturally there is a key that lets you toggle between them, but it wasn't working. It was almost comical to me to watch my host mom get increasingly frustrated, then give up writing her email instead of using the kana.

[kumo]

What program do I need to use, to input hiragana and katakana but using a regular UK English keyboard?

I think IME is the best way:
http://www.greggman.com/japan/xp-ime/xp-ime.htm

Btw, has anyone ever used ATOK (http://www.atok.com/) for Japanese inputting? Is it any better than IME?

[Buntaro]

Kinsao,

What version of Windows (if so) do you use?