Japanese Direct Input

Question

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000NJS3MU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I ordered these to put on my keyboard. I can't figure out how to get windows to directly put these characters in when i type rather than me having to type it in romaji.

For example to type 何 (nani) I have to type the Latin characters (nani) rather than directly typing the Japanese characters (なに）listed on the keys.

Answer 1

What you can do is:

1. Open the Time & Language section of Settings.
2. Open Region & Language
3. Press 'Add a Language'
4. Find your dialect, and click on it.
5. When it is ready, click on your language, and click 'options'.
6. Click 'change layout' in Hardware Keyboard Layout.
7. Select your layout.

Then it will have your language's layout.

Answer 2

You need to change input method from ローマ字入力 (romaji input) to かな入力 (kana input). There are lots of ways of doing this. On Windows 10, one way is to right-click on the あ symbol in the notification area, then click ローマ字入力 / かな入力, then choose かな入力.

Clearly you don't have a Japanese keyboard, but if you did then you could use the hiragana key (ひらがな キー), which has three words on it: カタカナ, ひらがな, and ローマ字. On my computer, if I press Alt and the hiragana key, it asks whether I want this key combination to mean "switch between ローマ字入力 and かな入力" from now on. Alternatively, I can switch between them by pressing Ctrl, Shift, and the hiragana key.

But most Japanese people type using the roman characters, i.e. they use ローマ字入力. You might find that easier as it doesn't require learning a new keyboard layout.