Is there an app that will give me a japanese keyboard?

[sophia1212]

I need to be able to type/convert words in Japanese. The only thing I was able to find was an app that translates stuff into japanese (I guess useful if you are trying to read a japanese book?) and there was another app that seemed like something I needed called OpenWnn plus, but it won't budge. I installed it, but it does nothing. I can't even find it anywhere on my droid except where you go to manage your apps and the only thing I can do with it there is uninstall it.

help?

 

[nunka]

I need to be able to type/convert words in Japanese. The only thing I was able to find was an app that translates stuff into japanese (I guess useful if you are trying to read a japanese book?) and there was another app that seemed like something I needed called OpenWnn plus, but it won't budge. I installed it, but it does nothing. I can't even find it anywhere on my droid except where you go to manage your apps and the only thing I can do with it there is uninstall it.

help?

I use OpenWnn plus. It's by far the best Japanese IME on the market.

To enable it, you need to go to your phone's settings > language & keyboard, and check the "OpenWnn plus" option. You may also want to disable HANABI input in the OpenWnn plus settings menu, but that's up to you. One thing you'll want to enable if you've used a Japanese IME on a PC is the "QWERTY on landscape" option.

And to type with it, you need to long-press on any area where you can enter text, then change the input method from the menu that pops up. To get it to kana input mode, you need to hit the [SIZE=+1]文字 button on the -onscreen- keyboard twice. Once you do that, you can type using kana with the 12-key software keyboard or romaji with the hardware keyboard.

It's kind of a pain getting it up and running, but it's the most PC-like of all the IMEs on the market when you use the hardware keyboard. And don't forget to switch back to the Android keyboard with a long press when you're finished.
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[MoreDroid]

I use JSandBox.
You have to go back and forth between the JSandBox and whatever email or word application you're using which can get time-consuming but once you're used to it, it works fairly well.

 

[NVash]

Theres one that translates to Japanese? Whats the name of that, if you dont mind?

And is there an English-Japanese translator that will translate what I say to Japanese? Id like to see the English spelling of the words or the Japanese spelling, just think itd be cool to send a Japanese txt every once in awhile to throw people off.

BTW, I dont know Japanese but Ive been working on teaching myself for years.

 

[Sushipath]

I need to be able to type/convert words in Japanese. The only thing I was able to find was an app that translates stuff into japanese (I guess useful if you are trying to read a japanese book?) and there was another app that seemed like something I needed called OpenWnn plus, but it won't budge. I installed it, but it does nothing. I can't even find it anywhere on my droid except where you go to manage your apps and the only thing I can do with it there is uninstall it.

help?

I use OpenWnn plus. It's by far the best Japanese IME on the market.

To enable it, you need to go to your phone's settings > language & keyboard, and check the "OpenWnn plus" option. You may also want to disable HANABI input in the OpenWnn plus settings menu, but that's up to you. One thing you'll want to enable if you've used a Japanese IME on a PC is the "QWERTY on landscape" option.

And to type with it, you need to long-press on any area where you can enter text, then change the input method from the menu that pops up. To get it to kana input mode, you need to hit the [SIZE=+1]文字 button on the -onscreen- keyboard twice. Once you do that, you can type using kana with the 12-key software keyboard or romaji with the hardware keyboard.

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Am I missing something? I tried the above, but I'm unable to type romaji with the hardware keyboard. I can get it (OpenWnn Plus) up and running, but after converting to kana input mode, if I switch to landscape format to reveal the hardware keyboard, the IME appears to cease immediately, and I can only type in English (or romaji, but then can't convert to actual Japanese text). My fingers seem a bit too thick to type with the on-screen keyboard with any accuracy or speed.

Is there a way to use the hardware keyboard to type in romaji, which the IME can then convert to kana or kanji? (i.e. just like the Japanese IME on my Windows PC?)

 

[sophia1212]

i want to revive this thread bc I am having the same problem with my new vortex as sushipath is having. I have no idea why my droid is able to switch to landscape and maintain the typed japanese (from romaji), but with my vortex phone I can only type in japanese in landscape, and if I flip it to portrait, everything disappears. additionally, I am unable to type in japanese on portrait unless I am actually using kana (and quite frankly, I dont know anyone who uses kana to type japanese! everyone i know uses romaji to type and it automaticaly converts to japanese..)

if someone can help with this latest problem, i would be grateful... tia!

 

[DFSBMC]

i want to revive this thread bc I am having the same problem with my new vortex as sushipath is having. I have no idea why my droid is able to switch to landscape and maintain the typed japanese (from romaji), but with my vortex phone I can only type in japanese in landscape, and if I flip it to portrait, everything disappears. additionally, I am unable to type in japanese on portrait unless I am actually using kana (and quite frankly, I dont know anyone who uses kana to type japanese! everyone i know uses romaji to type and it automaticaly converts to japanese..)

if someone can help with this latest problem, i would be grateful... tia!

Similar problem here. Would be interested in a solution.

 

[Sushipath]

Hopefully this will be helpful... At least for my own purposes, I've found a workable solution (with a Droid 2 and OpenWnn Plus).

With OpenWnn Plus, I'm now able to use the hardware keyboard in landscape mode, and it works quite well. After activating OpenWnn Plus as the input method, when you're ready to begin typing, you can press Shift+Space bar to toggle between regular English/romaji output and kana/kanji output. A small icon appears in the top bar, either "AB" or the hiragana for "a" respectively, to indicate which mode you're in. In the latter mode, you type in Romaji, but characters output on the screen as hiragana, which can then be converted as you desire into katakana or kanji via on-screen menus.

In portrait mode, I don't have any better solutions-- as far as I know, you're stuck with the onscreen keyboard (and hence I don't use it in portrait mode). Incidentally, the kana mode described by sophia1212 (12-key pad, multiple key presses to scroll through a series of phonetically-related kana) was the standard input method on a relatively simply cell phone I rented during a trip to Japan last year.

Hope this is helpful! (I suppose my only major annoyance in figuring this out was that it was the result of me just pressing random key combinations-- brute force trial-and-error-- until finally something happened! It'd be really nice if stuff like this was written down somewhere... Or somewhere easy to find...)

 

[happycamper515]

We just got Dinc2s yesterday and my wife types in Japanese so it was upsetting to her that the Japanese keyboard wasn't natively a part of Android. The Verizon guys said it was and at the Verizon kiosk we saw it at the guy actually showed us Japanese so we though it was native to Android.

We bought the phones from Wirefly because it was much cheaper but when they came yesterday and after reading stuff on the net, the Japanese keyboard is not native Android we discovered.

So I downloaded the easy Japanese keyboard first and the wife hated it...said it had to be developed by an non-Japanese because it was so bad. Then I downloaded OpenWnn Plus and it works much better. For a cell phone due to the size limitation she prefers the Hanabi input which is very similar to the iphone/ipod touch. We have an ipod touch so she's used to that style of input.

On a computer I think she types using the Win IME in hiragana but being that this is her first smartphone she's not used to typing on it and the size limitations make typing the same way you do on a computer all but impossible.

She says it's still not good as the iphone for Japanese, and the phone lacks the capability to for an entire Japanese display, but I think it's workable and she said she'll keep it. I gave her the option to return the phone and get an iphone but she said no.