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: