Japanese Input Methods - Japanese Keyboards

Japanese Keyboards

Japanese keyboards (as shown in the image to the right) have both hiragana and Roman letters indicated. The JIS, or Japanese Industrial Standard, keyboard layout keeps the Roman letters in the English qwerty layout, with numbers above them. Many of the non-alphanumeric symbols are the same as on English-language keyboards, but some symbols are located in other places. The hiragana symbols are also ordered in a consistent way across different keyboards. For example, the Q, W, E, R, T, Y keys correspond to た, て, い, す, か, ん respectively (the English sounds for the previous hiragana symbols are: ta, te, i, su, ka, and n respectively) when the computer is used for direct hiragana input.

Keyboards using hiragana, like those shown, are rarely found outside of Japan; however, there is no special hardware requirement for a user to input Japanese via the romaji input method. Most newer operating systems allow this function, even when the operating system itself is in English or another non-Japanese language, and a non-Japanese keyboard is used.