you know what

[Nia-chan]

I've been wondering about this for a while. How in the world do the Japanese type? I guess the keys could be in some Japanese characters, but how would they type in English?

[TheMelodyMaker]

I believe they use a special program called an input method editor (or something like that) in which they type the English romanization of their kana and it automatically converts to the actual Japanese kana. I'm only guessing, though.

[true_noir_chloe]

If you watch Princess Blade there's a scene where the guy character is typing on a computer. It showed the characters moving down on the screen from right to left and there were periods at the end of his sentences. It looked kind of cool.

[Little T-chan]

That's a good question...how do they? I can type in Korean tho. Just can't spell to save my life. ^^;

[Mave]

I'm not the expert here but I have friends who have kanji on their keyboards and type chinese on a daily basis. It's quite complex-looking...0.o when I get a decent answer from my friends, I'll post it here.

hmm...I don't know which is more commonly used, 'traditional' or 'simplified'. Guess I find out when I ask my buddies later...^^

[shooraijin]

> I've been wondering about this for a while. How in the world do the Japanese type?

I can tell you how it works in Kotoeri on my Mac, and that's how Japanese users on a Macintosh would be typing in characters.

Say I wanted to type a message like,

Boku wa to o akemashita. (I opened the door.)

I start typing in each word in Japanese, spelling it phonetically.

(I type 'bo')ぼ(I type 'ku')く(I press SPACE to find a kanji matching 'boku')僕(I press RETURN to accept the kanji)(I type 'ha' -- remember the particle 'wa' is spelled 'ha')は(I press RETURN to accept it just as hiragana)(I type 'to')と(I press SPACE)と(it leaves it as hiragana since it's most commonly used as okurigana)(I press SPACE again saying it guessed wrong and it gives me a drop down list; I choose)戸(I press RETURN to accept)(I type 'wo' -- remember the particle 'o' is spelled 'wo')を(I press RETURN)(I type 'akemashita' -- I won't spell this out)あけました(I press SPACE and it selects)開けました　... which is in fact the kanji I want, even though there are several 'akeru' and it lets me pick others from the list.

So, finally,
僕は戸を開けました。

終わった (Owatta ... "finished")