Javascript hiragana/katakana keyboard

Welcome to the online Japanese input page

This page is designed to help you, the casual Japanese learner or interested bystander, with a few simple tasks. Its purpose is to allow access to the various Japanese hiragana and katakana symbols, without going through the installation of text input extensions. Click on the required symbol, and the system will add it to the display at the top of the page. You may also type directly into that display. To see the result of your work, click on the 'Display' button and a separate window will open that displays the formatted results. You may then print it or save it as basic HTML. Alternatively, you can simply use it as a source of Unicode characters and cut-and-paste directly from the display at the top of the page.

Note that the Romanji input now permits you not only to input syllables in lower-case for hiragana or upper-case for katakana (eg. to write my name in katakana, I would input E, then MMA'), but also to use a few whole words, in Japanese or in English, to return the kanji. For example, 'east', 'wednesday', or 'hayashi' all return a corresponding kanji or group of kanji. Numbers will be turned into their kanji equivalents (currently works up to 99,999).Dates, eg, 01/01/2004 or 09-10-1999, will be represented in kanji unless the 'use kanji for date' box is unchecked.

Limitations: This page will only work on Unicode aware browsers, probably only with installed Japanese sections of the Unicode fonts; it has been successfully tested on various brands of Mozilla and Internet Explorer, however.

Requirements are: Recent Mozilla/Netscape 6+ or recent IE. Note to Moz/GTK users: if the Mozilla you use isn't compiled with the principal GTK you're using, you have a high chance of seeing little rectangles instead of fonts. Recompile :-)