Installing Japanese Support and Writing Japanese on a Mac

[schwing]

This HOWTO will allow you to type in hiragana or katakana characters in to your forum posts or in to any other document. This was done in Mac OS 10.4 so may differ slightly in earlier versions.

First, open up your 'System Preferences' and select 'International' from the first row. Now select the 'Input Menu' tab. At the top you should see an item called 'Japanese Kana Palette'. Checkmark the box next to it to enable it. This will give you a "kana picker" that you can select individual characters from. If you would like this picker conveniently located, checkmark the box at the bottom called 'Show input menu in menu bar'.

If you do not see any of the above options you will need to add Japanese Language Support from your Mac OSX install discs.

After this is done, click the flag in the Menu Bar and select from the menu 'Show Japanese Kana Palette'. This will bring up your picker. Click the character you want to insert and away you go!

-ken

[edited by Jason to add]
For actually typing in Japanese characters
First, I strongly suggest checking "Show input menu in menu bar" as Ken already mentioned. I also recommend selecting "Use one input source in all documents" on the same tab. To be able to type in Japanese, from the Input Menu tab, check the box next to "Kotoeri." When you're ready to type in Japanese characters, click on the flag in the menu bar and chose hiragana. Typing and converting to Japanese works the same as in Windows, so read sections 6-14 and 16 at this link for details.
-Jason

[doriangrey64]

do you have a howto for a PC? thanks....

[Jason]

do you have a howto for a PC? thanks....

http://www.japanesepod101.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9

[lucasburns]

And pressing apple+space will toggle between the current input method and the last one. For me that means Austrlaian input and Japanese input. Very very convenient. I don't htink it is supposed to work that way! It is supposed to go to the next input method on your list, according to the international thingy in the system prefs. Either way, it is still great!

[Jason]

What I did was enable only Romaji (direct input) and Hiragana input, and then I set the keyboard shortcut for "Select the next input source in the input menu" to Alt+~ (you could set this to something you might be more comfortable with). This way I can switch very quickly between English and Japanese input like I do in Windows.

[Bueller_007]

What I did was enable only Romaji (direct input) and Hiragana input, and then I set the keyboard shortcut for "Select the next input source in the input menu" to Alt+~ (you could set this to something you might be more comfortable with). This way I can switch very quickly between English and Japanese input like I do in Windows.

The best way is just to buy a Japanese keyboard. And I actually like the Japanese keyboard layout much more.

[Nate]

Lucas-san,

Thanks for the tidbit about the Apple+space switch. Very cool.

From one Mac guy to another - Arigatou gozaimasu.

ネイト

[Jason]

The best way is just to buy a Japanese keyboard. And I actually like the Japanese keyboard layout much more.

Well, it's a bit difficult to replace the keyboard on a laptop. And I don't have the desk space for an external one.

[Outkast]

Also on the Apple+space tip, if you hold down the shift button while you type, viola! Katakana...

[CrazySwayzee]

maybe this should be stickied for fellow mac users?

[Jason]

maybe this should be stickied for fellow mac users

So stickied.

[Bueller_007]

The best way is just to buy a Japanese keyboard. And I actually like the Japanese keyboard layout much more.

Well, it's a bit difficult to replace the keyboard on a laptop. And I don't have the desk space for an external one.

Actually, with iBooks, you can just pop the keyboard right out.

[rdesiree]

hey! shift ->katakana ? Great!
The only problem I see is that I will never ever learn to write those things... but I can type real fast

[Alcyone]

You can toggle through all input methods with the CMD-Option-Spacebar key combo.

How do you know what to type to get the Kanji? I had to type the onyomi "jo" while in the hiragana input mode to get the character for woman when the kunyomi "onna" brought up about 20 characters but not 女.

Does it change based on what application you're in? Firefox won't bring up 女 in this textbox in hiragana or katakana input mode and I had to copy paste it from Text Edit.

Thanks.

[annie]

i think it's the same application regardless of where you're typing japanese (at least the same dictionary/kanji list come up in all of the programs that i use)

when i type "onna" into my firefox browser the proper kanji comes up with no problem.
make sure you have the double "n" in there. i can't think of any other reason why it wouldn't work for you.