Adding language keyboards to Windows XP
In
the Start menu, find and select Control Panel. In the resulting
window, double click the icon called "Regional and Language Options".
In the Regional and Language Options window, click on the tab at the top labeled 'Languages' and then click the Details... button.

In this window, you will find a list of all the languages currently enabled.
Click the Add button to add a new language to the list.
In the Input language drop-down list, select Japanese (or
any other language you would like to install). notice that in the field
labeled Keyboard Layout/IME, an input system or keyboard layout is selected
for you. If you would like a different input method, there is often more
than one choice for any language. The default is usually the most common,
however.
Click OK to close this window and then Apply in the underlying window. Again click OK to close this window.
In the bottom right hand corner of the screen, you should now see an
icon similar to
. Click
this icon to see a list of the installed languages, select the language
in which you would like to type.

Inputting Japanese in Windows XP
Open Microsoft Word and then select Japanese from the keyboard selection in the taskbar.
While Japanese is selected as the input language, several other menus appear: the Input Style menu and the Input Mode menu.
Click the Input Style menu and make sure that IME Standard is selected. Click on the Input Mode menu and select the type of text you would like to type: Hiragana, Full-width Katakana, Full-width Alphanumeric, Half-width Katakana, Half-width Alphanumeric
Select Hiragana. In Microsoft Word, type 'nihongo'. This
should appear on the screen as
Notice the dotted line under the word. Because there are often several
ways to write words in Japanese, this dotted line indicates that Word
is waiting for you to confirm. You can confirm this writing of the word
by pressing the Enter key. If you would like to see other options, including
Kanji, press the Space bar - for example: ![]()