I have decidedly dedicated my future time to learning the JIS keyboard — I’m nearly fluent in Japenese, so knowing the characters aren’t that hard….but knowing \_Where they’re at\_ after 20 years of computers is difficult. Most of you out there will likely say “Why use the JIS keyboard instead of IME?” to of which, I have two answers. The first is, I really like retro Japanese concepts such as this, and it just feels really cool, and I think I might be able to type faster in the end with it — the second is that I bounce between windows and Linux very frequently, and I pretty much reinstall linux every other day at this point — and it’s easy as hell to use the JIS keyboard by default on linux, but difficult to set up an IME keyboard (using FCITX5 ofc), and I’m pretty sure it pings the kanji I pick over to microsoft if I go the Mozc route — regardless, that’s probably a bit too technical for this thread.
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Does anybody have any tips and tricks as to what is where? I do not have a JIS keyboard, I have a standard American one — but there are things microsoft implemented to making JIS work well, even though it’s missing a few crucial keys.
I appreciate any tips, tricks, or help! At the moment, I’m just struggling with it, thinking of random phrases and typing them out, relearning my keyboard so I can be “keyboard-bilingual” lmao
4 comments
JIS keyboards are for sale online in the US and Europe, so you might pick up a cheap one to try out.
For some keyboards, optional JIS keycaps are sold. A few years ago, I saw stickers and silicone covers for sale but would not recommend either.
Alternatively, importing a new or used keyboard from Japan.
FYI – Apple stores carried several international keyboards and could change them in an hour. The US layout sometimes was a bit different so would not be “perfect”. Not sure if Apple still does this.
Just so you know I don’t know one single Japanese person who uses JIS at work or otherwise.
Well, this turned into a longer response than I was anticipating, so… TL;DR: JIS is not worth learning, but if you are deadset on it for niche reasons, at least get a physical JIS keyboard.
Even if you were to become a master at the JIS layout, I’m not sure it’s worth it without a physical JIS keyboard. Apart from the obvious difference of typing with one key per kana vs. typing in romaji and having it convert, the existence of the dedicated 無変換 and 変換 (also 半角・全角 and カタカカナ・ひらがな) keys make it a very different typing experience. With software you could probably emulate this to some degree, but the ‘smaller’ of the full size JIS keyboards are 106, whereas the ‘larger’ of the full size English keyboards are 104, so by virtue of physical difference it will not be the same. Not to mention the 無変換 and 変換 keys are to the left and right of a much smaller spacebar, so even if you were to map the alt or super keys to those, it wouldn’t really feel the same on account of them not being convenient to use.
You also mentioned reinstalling linux so I’m assuming you’re relatively techy… the minor difference in position of various special characters will almost certainly cause your programming muscle memory to have aneurysm (see [this](http://qa.elecom.co.jp/faq_detail.html?id=5262) for a high level comparison). Hell, the difference in where parentheses are gives a whole new meaning to off-by-one error (on JP keyboards the parens are on 8-9, not 9-0). Tilde/backtick, quotation mark, forward and backslash, semicolon, pipe… all of these are in different places. I don’t know how much time you spend typing in Japanese on all these various machines you’re spinning up, but you will almost certainly lose more time just trying to do ‘normal’ tech things from a terminal than you gain from improved efficiency using JIS.
> but difficult to set up an IME keyboard (using FCITX5 ofc), and I’m pretty sure it pings the kanji I pick over to microsoft if I go the Mozc route
I’ve never bothered to set up an IME on linux myself, but given what I know about computers and setting up new envs… I almost guarantee it’s not actually that hard to automate setting up an IME of your choice. Japanese people use linux, too, so I’m sure there’s some pre-built solution out there for whatever distro you’re using. If by chance you’re using some niche distro no one in Japan uses, I’m still pretty sure you could write a portable shell script to install it that would make it trivial every time you need to redeploy. Also, minor nit, but Mozc is an open source project released (but not as an official product) by Google, not Microsoft. I haven’t checked if it has any telemetry, but considering it’s open source you probably could check it yourself/someone probably has already checked it, and if it’s an issue, someone’s probably forked it to work without telemetry.
Anyway, if somehow that’s not enough to convince you, I still think the best ‘tip’ would be to get your hands on a physical keyboard that is laid out for JIS. Not only would that have the characters written out on the actual keys to facilitate learning, but the majority of the time ‘wasted’ typing Japanese is swapping between input methods and 変換, which JIS keyboards are specifically physically laid out to facilitate. Even if you could emulate this with software, setting up that emulation is likely going to be slower than just setting up an IME, not to mention the physical distance of whatever keys you choose to use as a substitute will likely erase any gains you would get in the first place. If you’re picky about your keyboards, there are plenty of MKBs with Japanese layouts (look for 「日本語配列」), even if you’re on a budget, I really don’t think it’s worth trying this without spending $30-40 or whatever to get a cheap one shipped from Japan.
It’s probably better to buy a JIS keyboard if you want to type with direct kana input. If you were going to use the JIS layout on an ANSI keyboard, does it even have enough keys for the kana themselves? I believe `ろ` gets remapped to the left of `ぬ` (the current `1/!`) since there is no `全／半` key that needs to be there, but where does the `む` key go?
The extra text editing keys are also very nice to have.