Japanese Language
5 Simple Hacks to Help You Save Time and Type Faster in Japanese
Tips from a non-native typer who writes a lot of e-mails in the Japanese language
This article assumes you already have some basic knowledge and experience typing in Japanese.
I won’t be talking about typing with a Japanese keyboard — I never learned how and thankfully, you don’t need one to type in Japanese. You just need to use a Japanese IME provided by Microsoft (assuming that you are running Windows) that you can download for free.
Luckily, typing in Japanese with a regular keyboard is reasonably intuitive. Unlike Chinese, which has tones, Japanese doesn’t, meaning input is much easier.
Simply type the romaji equivalent of whatever word you are typing, hit the space key, and see it transform into the kanji you want.
You might need to search a little in some cases — but not to the same extent as when typing Chinese.
Still, there are tricks and hacks to optimize the process and save more time typing Japanese. Let’s get into the details.
