There are 2 main aspects to “using” Japanese on your Windows XP computer:

1. viewing/reading, and
2. writing.

It’s actually quite straight forward to set it up to do both and I’m going to show you how.

Firstly, adding basic East Asian language support

To complete this section you will need:

• Windows XP CD-ROM
• local Administrator priviledges

First thing you need to do is enable, if it isn’t already, supplemental language support in Windows.  You can do this only when you’re logged on as an Administrator (if you’re unsure, give it a shot anyway and you’ll soon learn if you can do it or not).

1. Click the ‘Start‘ menu on the bottom-left corner, and click the ‘Control Panel‘ menu item.
2. From the window that opens, double-click the icon ‘Regional and Language Options‘
3. You will then be given a little window to select various options.  Click the ‘Languages‘ tab at the top, and on the lower half of the window you will see a check box labeled: ‘Install files for East Asian languages‘. Check this box on (if it’s not already) and insert the Windows XP CD-ROM when you’re prompted to do so.
4. Restart the computer.

Second stage: Japanese writing system

Now that the support for these languages is present on the system, you can now add the ability to type Japanese (including Chinese, Korean and more…) in Windows programs. Microsoft calls these Input Method Editors (IMEs) and the steps to do this is as follows:

1. Again, launch the ‘Regional and Language Options‘ program in step (2) above and go to the ‘Languages‘ tab.
2. Click the ‘Details…’ button which opens another dialog window called ‘Text Services and Input Languages‘.
3. You will see a list of all the currently active/’installed services’ in the middle of the dialog. If this area has never been configured before, you’ll probably have just 1 entry, likely English. Click the ‘Add…‘ button and in the dialog window that pops up, select Japanese in the first drop-down menu box and click OK.
4. At the top of the now-open window be sure to select the ‘Default input language‘ to whichever you prefer – English or Japanese.
5. One more setting I recommend is to click the ‘Language Bar…‘ button at the bottom and select to ‘Show the Language bar on the desktop‘. The other options you can set to personal tastes.

And you’re done!

Toggling between input languages

Language bar input selection

When you want to switch between the input language, normally you use the language bar and select it.  However, one very convenient method of running through the options is to, on your keyboard, hold down the ‘Alt‘ key and tap the ‘Shift‘ key. You will see the language bar state rotate through each of the input locales that you selected from the previous section.

One further quick tip is that when you’re in the Japanese input locale context, to quickly switch between normal direct English text input and Hiragana/Katakana, is to hold down the ‘Alt‘ key and tap the key on the upper-left hand side of the keyboard, beside the ’1′ key. This is typically the tilda ‘~‘ key. This works on most keyboards, but I can’t speak for all.  Just try it out and see…

Typical character display issues

Sometimes there are problems with displaying Japanese characters even though you’ve performed the steps in the first section. This comes from the fact that not all programs are created equally and the text embedded in the program is programmed in such a way that they cannot be displayed by Windows unless you tell Windows the correct language context, i.e. Japanese. For example, I use Office XP here at work and when I get emails with Japanese in the subject, I get a load of nonsense text. The only way to get past this is to tell Windows to interpret the text as Japanese. It’s a pain, but there is a way out.  Here is how you do it:

1. Return to the ‘Regional and Language Options‘ program and go to the ‘Advanced‘ tab.
2. There is a drop-down menu under the section entitled ‘Language for non-Unicode programs‘. Select Japanese from this.
3. Restart the computer when prompted to do so.

The one issue I take with this is that changing this setting to Japanese can have far-reaching implications to your daily use of Windows. Nothing too serious, but if for example a program is written for both English and Japanese, the Japanese will take precedence.

One more issue is web browsing. Ideally you should be using Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome to surf the web. I don’t know about Chrome, but in Firefox when you come across a Japanese page displayed as nonsense, just go to the View menu -> ‘Character Encoding’ and pick one of the 3 that are available for Japanese under the ‘More Encodings’ menu.

That’s the basics for now, I hope you find some of this useful. If you’d like a further visual walkthrough for some of the above, please take a look here.

If you’re looking to find another option for Japanese language teachers, then I’m writing this to suggest to you another great one.  If you go to a Japanese language institution, you will typically have group lessons for approximately 4000~6000 yen / 60mins or 90mins.  If you want to get a private, 1-on-1 lesson, you will pay on the upper range of the group lesson costs.  Not only that, you will likely have to pay for a block of lessons all at once and this can be quite restrictive for many.  Another alternative is www.labochi.com .

How it works

As a student, you sign up to the website and fill out your profile.  You will detail where you live, or work, or both, and which you would prefer as a venue for your lesson.  You then have space to write freely what you are seeking from your lessons and any other requirements you might have.

Once you complete the profile and submit, the teachers that have signed-up to the service will receive your profile details and they will each then submit to you their offer of service if they so desire.  They will include their costs and where they are prepared to stage the lesson based around your preferences.  Whether the costs include transportation will also be typically stated.

Typically also, the teacher will provide an initial pro bono trial lesson in order to sample whether or not the teacher is likely to offer you the services in the style or manner that you need.

Gaijin Guide is in no way affiliated with Labochi.com.  This article is posted solely as a guide and we offer and accept no liability for experiences, services, problems, costs, or otherwise, resulting from this article or use of the labochi website.  As always, please use your own judgment and use these services responsibly.

If you’re looking to do online shopping in Japan, there are many websites out there, but of course 99% of them are in Japanese.  An exception to this is Amazon Japan. where they have a partially bilingual website that let’s you browse and search for products in English also.

However, to open an account, the sign-up process is Japanese only.  Over at PaulGoodchild.net, there is a guide on how to open an account using the Japanese language forms, with screen shots and explanations to guide you throw the whole process.  Once you’ve done this step, you can sign-in and manage your account in English.

Very easy.

Link to the how-to guide

So, check out the guide to signing up for Amazon Japan if you can’t read Japanese!

If you’re living in Japan one thing I will say is that learning the language will definitely 0pen up the world to you here.  You will be able to read menus in restaurants, communicate with more people and while you’ll always be different you can at least live a semblance of normality.

If you’re actively studying and you’re particularly interested in learning kanji, then I’m recommending here thee site that pushed my vocabulary and kanji recognition to the level it is now.  Flashcards are great, and I have tried them, but I’m too lazy.  I don’t like sitting down to write them all out, it’s just not something I find enjoyment in.  I prefer the electronic approach; it just works best for me.

Kantango wordlists

The site I use is: Kantango.com

Note, if you can’t read Japanese on your computer/browser, please check out this how to on displaying and writing Japanese characters.

You need to register for the Kantango site, which takes only a second or two.  When you log in, you’ll be presented with a screen displaying your ‘folders’ on the left, and the wordlists for that folder on the right.  It’s all very simple.

Click the ‘New List’ button and give it a name.  For example, I have created lists such as ‘Train Station Vocab’, ‘Body Parts’, ‘Fish’, ‘Colours’ etc.

Once created, you’ll be brought to the contents of the wordlist, which is currently empty.  On the left is your search bar and this brings me to one of the most powerful aspects about the way this site search has been designed.

When you search (and you can search using kanji, romaji, hiragana and katakana!), let’s say you put in the one character, it returns a result that is an exact match, by default.  Alternatively, you can choose between:

• Exact Match
• Starts With
• Ends With
• Partial Match

…and then re-run the search.  By selecting ‘Partial Match’ it will return every term in the dictionary containing that kanji and due to its helpful labeling system, it will tell you if the word is useful by indicating it as a “common word” within the meaning description.  Select the words you’d like, and  ‘Add to Wordlist‘.

Before I get to that, I’ll digress a little though:  One approach I take to learning is to pick a kanji and learn the crap out of it.  How does one actually learn the crap out of a kanji I hear you murmur?  Well since kanji in general are ideographs, they may be used in isolation or in conjunction with other kanji to convey meaning.  The best way I have found for me to consolidate a meaning for one is to have a list of words learned that contain that particular kanji character.  That way, rather than just simply learning a kanji, how to recognise it and it’s dictionary meaning, I have learned the meaning as a feeling or a idea so that when I see it, I can be fairly sure of its influence in a compound.   So, let’s take the following kanji as a example here:

予 : beforehand, previous, pre-

So where is this kanji found in compounds?  In the following:

予定 : plan, schedule
予報 : forecast, prediction
予防 : prevention, precaution
予算 : budget, estimate
予感 : premonition, presentiment

I’m sure by now you can see or feel the meaning of the particular kanji we want to learn by now?  All the compounds above have a feeling in-common… and that is of something that has “come before”.  A really neat advantage to this is also that you can then guess at the meanings of the other 5 kanji used in the compounds and you’d be fairly accurate in doing so.  The best way again is to pick one of them and grab say 5 compounds which contain it and learn them.  This approach is the single biggest contributor to my kanji recognition ability right now.

So how does this fit into Kantango?

That’s just one approach to learning and quickly finding related words and phrases

Kantango flashcards

After creating at leaset one wordlists that you want to study, browse to it.  You have many options to manage the words in there and technique I’ve found useful is that of “Word Tags”.

This is a powerful method, at least I found it so.

Lets say the first 3 words of your list, you feel, are in your brain and you’re not going to forget them.  Check the boxes beside the words and using the left-side menu drop-down box “Mark checked words…” whichever level you feel appropriate.  Note: you can not only tag the words, but also separately the kanji.  So you may feel you know the words, but you haven’t mastered the kanji… this tool provides that level of differentiation.

Next, click the Flashcards button and you’ll be brought to the flashcard set-up screen.  Choose to be either presented with the English meaning, or the Japanese (in Kana, Kanji or Romaji, or any combination of them) and then have the flip side show whatever you want.  The tags then allow you to select the words that you want to review after you mastered them, or just work with the words that are tagged as “New”.  Or all of the words in the list.  You can pick and choose without having to set up a flashcard set of everything in the word-list.

Sharing is Caring

Kantango allows you to share your wordlists with other users.  If you’d like to see my wordlists, please take a look here – I have also included all the vocab lists for Minna no Nihongo books 1 and 2, by chapter.

I hope you find this tool useful… there are many tools out there, but I have yet to find another that is as customizable and doesn’t require the use of a heavy Java/Flash plugin.  Enjoy!