Problem with Japanese Windows Keyboard

14 comments

1. You can’t change the default afaik (if someone has a way then PLEASE tag me), but you can use left shift + capslock to switch between them without the mouse, which makes it less painful.

2. I don’t know how to solve this problem, but I do prefer using google’s japanese IME. Whe I switch to it with ALT+SHIFT I just press ALT+CAPS to change to the hiragana and again if I need the katakana, to go back to the hiragana though I need to switch to the windows IME and go back to the google IME. But hey I don’t to remove my hands off the keyboard everytime.

3. I saw this recently
   https://youtu.be/1scr5J45hUE
   Made me realise finally how i keep on gettinflg small tsu out of the blue. Also happy about the shortcuts

4. Honestly, the issues with how clunky Japanese IME works on an English keyboard is why I wound up just buying a Japanese-style keyboard for my desktop. Any time that I need to do any kind of practice typing, I use my desktop to get it done.

   My keyboard was something like $20 off of Amazon (I know, ew) but it’s wireless and gets the job done.

5. You can quickly switch between kana and alphanumeric on the Japanese keyboard by hitting alt+` (that’s the tilde `/~) key.

   That way you can just leave your keyboard in Japanese and switch back and forth with a quick keystroke. That’s what I do at least.

   You can also quickly switch between English and Japanese keyboards with windows key+spacebar

6. I don’t know much about the Windows IME, however on Linux Mozc + Fcitx5 works like a charm. There you can change every Standard Input, every Keyboard shortcut etc.

   I don’t have any experience for mozc on Windows, but theoretically it should work on Windows as well:

   https://github.com/google/mozc/blob/master/docs/build_mozc_in_windows.md

   However it seems like It’s quite a drag to build and install, if you’re a bit hacky with Computers, you could give it a try I guess

7. Alt+~ swaps input modes, much easier than manually digging around in settings

8. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/microsoft-japanese-ime-da40471d-6b91-4042-ae8b-713a96476916

   Japanese IME article.

9. Shift+Alt – Switches between English and Japanese keyboards.

   Shift+CapsLock – Switches between kana and alphanumeric

10. There are various hot-key combinations that you can use to make it a little easier and I’m sure someone already posted them but ultimately, the fact that the Japanese IME does not retain hiragana input consistently or predictably when switching languages is a known issue that Windows refuses to fix or even acknowledge as an issue.

    It actually got worse between Windows 7 and 10 I noticed as well. In Windows 7, alt+caps lock reliably switched the input to hiragana and alt+tilde reliably toggled between the last 2 input modes. In windows 10, sometimes alt+caps lock seemingly does nothing, but the next time you use alt+tilde, it goes to katakana instead with no way to get back to hiragana except to use your mouse to switch.

    A possible workaround is to stop using a different input method to type latin letters and only use Japanese input for everything. In this case, alt+tilde will always toggle between latin letters and hiragana. This of course assumes your toggling between English and Japanese.

11. I couldn’t figure out the IME for the life of me as mine was acting even weirder than your issue. I just use the Japanese Google keyboard

12. alt shift and alt shift caps are your friends

13. buy a Mac 😉

14. The keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft’s IME are:

    * Alt+` (grave accent, key to the left of 1) to turn the IME on/off

    * CTRL+CapsLock for hiragana (assuming the IME is on)

    * ALT+CapsLock for katakana (assuming the IME is on)

    * Shift+CapsLock for romaji (with the IME on)

    You can find the rest of the shortcuts in the IME’s advanced settings, and even set up your own.

    I hope this helps. However, please do search around because this question gets answered about once a week.