I have Japanese keycaps and I use a Mac- is there any way for me to type the corresponding characters on my keyboard, not just the romaji?

15 comments

1. Go to System Preferences>Keyboard>Input Sources. Click the Plus/Add button, select Japanese on the left, and select Japanese-Kana. Click add. Voila!

2. I tried it once and it was absolutely horrible. Hopefully it works well for you.

3. usually people type in romaji anyways

4. Yo where can you get Japanese keycaps? I have a hyperx keyboard

5. The characters in that keyboard are a remainder from the input methods from Japanese computers from the 80s. Nobody uses them nowadays (other than a couple masochists).

   Instead, use the much superior “Japanese – Romaji” input method. It’s what the vast majority of Japanese people use nowadays.

6. Why would you do this

7. That way of typing is archaic, no one uses it. Well, except for Japanese people over 50. You’re better off using the English letters to make Japanese words. There’s no practical application to learning to type that way, because even if you move to Japan and work in a Japanese office, you won’t be typing that way.

8. bro that’s a cool lookin keyboard

9. Yeah, but very few Japanese people use this method and most of those who do are elderly. I would imagine that having to use the numkeys makes speed an issue.

10. I don’t know 😭

11. A lot of people have already mentioned it here, but I’ll also say it; no one in Japan uses that method of typing. Maybe some older people? Everyone here uses romaji basically to type. They start learning to type (romaji) in 3rd grade of elementary school, sometimes younger.

    You can go ahead and do it, but I personally don’t think it will prove to beneficial in the long run.

12. Oh man i was once talking to another foreigner about my age and he didn’t realize you could type in romaji. Like he’d been using the kana keyboard the whole time and was panicking bc he didn’t know how to type japanese on a foreign keyboard

13. where did you buy keycap

14. I know it is not the way it is written anymore and Japanese people nowadays get used to writing using romaji input.

    However, given that kana is a syllabary. Wouldn’t learning to type using it be faster?

    I might be wrong but I think typing three keys for おかね (that turns into お金) could be faster than typing five keys for okane (that turns into お金).

15. I say use them to write. For shits and giggles.

    It could be fun, it could be faster.

    You don’t have to do things like the standard. Some people learn Latin, Esperanto, or Klingon. Which doesn’t have that much practical use.

    It is kind of sad that only one (at the time of writing) answer to your question was answering the question as opposed to telling you, in different ways some polite some outright insulting. “No don’t do it, it is archaic and not the standard.”