1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456 7890 Japanisation FAQ for computers running Western Windows [FAQ] ============================================================ This FAQ is primarily concerned with detailing what is available, not with how to actually operate the software. Explaining how to use the software is the responsibility of the various software vendors. Specifically, this FAQ currently covers 32-bit Windows-based systems (95, 98, NT) with English as the main language. Some of the information may be applicable to other versions or language editions of Windows. Archive site: Last Revision: 1st March 2001 Posting Frequency: max once per month Posted to: sci.lang.japan CC to: - --- --- Contents 1 Windows 1.1 Displaying Japanese text 1.1.1 Japanese Language Operating System 1.1.1.1 Win98/J IME98 Bugs 1.1.1.2 Using Western Software in Japanese Windows 1.1.2 NJWIN 1.1.3 Unionway 1.1.4 Mview 1.1.5 Twinbridge 1.1.6 MSIE Japanese Extensions 1.1.7 MS Office Extensions 1.1.8 Basistech's Read japanese 1.1.9 Web Portals 1.2 Typing Japanese Text - Word Processors 1.2.1 JWP and JWPce 1.2.2 NJSTAR 1.2.3 Entering Japanese text into MSword 95/E and MSword 97/E 1.2.4 Neocor J-Text 1.2.5 MS Office 2000 1.2.6 Word perfect 2000 1.3 Typing Japanese Text - Front End Processors 1.3.1 MSIE IME 1.3.1.1 MS IME - Windows 98 Issues 1.3.1.2 MS IME - version 5x 1.3.1.3 MS IME - Windows 2000 1.3.2 Unionway 1.3.3 Kanjikit 1.3.4 NJCOM 1.4 Japanese TrueType Fonts 1.4.1 MS Mincho 1.4.2 MS Gothic 1.4.3 UWJMG3 (SJS) 1.4.4 Bitstream Cyberbit 1.4.5 kanji112.zip 1.4.6 Alis MMincho-Light 1.5 Displaying Japanese text within specific web browsers. 1.5.1 MSIE 3, 4 & 5 1.5.2 Netscape 2 1.5.3 Netscape 3 1.5.4 Netscape 4 1.5.5 Tabibito 1.5.6 Opera 1.5.7 Lynx for DOS 1.5.8 Tango 1.6 Software workarounds 1.6.1 Wrong country version workaround 1.7 Educational software 1.7.1 Jverb 1.7.2 Transparent.com 1.7.3 Kanjicard v1.7 1.7.4 Kanjidic 1.7.5 Itaiji-ten 1.7.6 JquickTrans 1.7.7 Quick Kanji Code Converter Other computer platforms 2.0 Apple Macintosh 3.0 BeOS 8.0 Web Links 8.1 Software producing companies 8.2 Software archives 8.3 Japanese-capable free Email servers 8.4 Websites for learning Japanese 8.4.1 Lessons 8.4.2 Dictionaries 8.4.3 Other 9.0 Boring bit 9.0.1 Legal Disclaimer 9.0.2 Copyright notice 9.0.3 Contact information 9.0.4 Concerning URLs --- 1.0.0 Windows The following URLs have more information on Japanising a computer. They also contains some information on supporting Chinese and Korean on English operating systems (the issues involved in supporting those languages are very similar). http://www.tjp.washington.edu/computing/japanese/guidetojapanesecomputing.ht ml http://www.panix.com/~tn/j-pc-os.html [dead link] 1.1 Displaying Japanese Text 1.1.1 Japanese language operating system If your budget stretches this far, you may want to buy a Japanese language version of Windows 9x. It contains all the options present within the English Windows 9x. However, all the help files and documentation are written in Japanese. It also contains an IME functionally superior to that included within the MSIE/en Japanese IME add-on. Japanese Windows ME is available now. The following companies outside Japan will sell Japanese Windows, and it is possible to contact Microsoft for a list of resellers who can supply you with Japanese language Windows. The cheapest way to obtain a legal copy is to persuade a friend in Japan to buy and send a copy to you. Windows 2000 is expected to have integral support for every language currently supported by any version of Windows. In theory, that should make this FAQ obsolete. The English/USA version was officially released on 17th February 2000. A Japanese version has also been released. The only significant difference is the language of the interface. However, the Japanese version is known to have some bugs in handling Japanese characters; these bugs were fixed in the USA release. All other sections of this document currently assume you will be running some version of 32-bit windows (Windows 95, 98, NT 3.51, NT 4). PC-Japan http://www.pc-japan.com (New Jersey, USA) 141 Kinderkamack Road Park Ridge, NJ 07656 tel: 1-888-PC JAPAN (725-2726) E-mail: sales@pc-japan.com Arabiaware http://www.arabiaware.com (Holland, EU) Amsterdamsestraatweg 81 3513 AB Utrecht The Netherlands tel: (31)30 2 322 093 or (31)30 2 334 061 fax: (31)30 2 34 34 61 E-mail: aw@knoware.nl 1.1.1.1 Win98/J IME98 Bugs A patch has been released to fix an apparent bug in this application. Information on this is available from: The patch itself can be downloaded from: Also, if you installed Windows98/J over a different language version of Windows and had the Japanese IME for IE installed, this can cause the system to crash when using the Windows 98 IME. Uninstalling the MSIE IME should fix this problem. The Japanese IME works fine with a Japanese or a USA keyboard, but other keyboards, notably European (including UK) ones, will behave as if the keyboard were a US keyboard. That is, shift-3 will always produce a # sign while the IME is running, regardless of which (non-US/JP) keyboard you actually use. 1.1.1.2 Using Western Software in Japanese Windows In general, there is very little problem with using such software. However, they may not necessarily be able to display Japanese correctly - English MS Excel 97 will crash if any attempt is made to enter Japanese (MS Word works fine). Also, some programs designed with European languages, such as French, will not function correctly as Windows may interpret the accented characters as Japanese. One minor problem with some English-language apps on Japanese Windows is that some of the text in dialog boxes may display at the wrong location or be clipped slightly short. One important caveat is with disk management software. Do not run English defrag, scandisk, or anti-virus software. These programs can detect Japanese filenames as errors, and make changes based on this assumption. Anti-virus programs may be unable to detect a virus in a file with a Japanese filename. If you have no choice but to run English versions of these, make sure that it will not automatically correct such 'errors', and have an undo facility ready if needed. The following are known to work with no major problems: MS Access 97 Netscape Navigator 4 Adobe Photoshop 5 The following have unusual behaviour under Japanese Windows: MS Word 97 will work with the Japanese IME under both Windows 2000 and Windows 98/JP. However, furigana are not enabled. MS Office 2000 is specifically designed to take advantage of the Japanese OS, giving equivalent functionality to the Japanese version of Office 2000. PageMaker 6.5 has major problems with proportionally-spaced Japanese fonts. It also doesn't know where to put line breaks when using Japanese fonts. However, There are some work-arounds. Corel Draw 8 is unstable on Japanese Windows. English MS Excel 97 will crash if kanji or upper ASCII characters are entered within Japanese Windows. In addition, the 'solver' tool is not available. Netscape Navigator v4 (English version) will crash if it encounters a web page with the barred 'H' character (HTML escape code values Ħ and ħ). 1.1.2 NJWIN This program will display Japanese text encoded in any format, including Unicode! It is by far the best Japanese viewer I have encountered, but it is shareware. Available from , based in Australia. Price is 50 USD, but a discount is given if you also buy the company's own word processor, both worth their price. This will display encoded text with Netscape, Explorer, Word, Notepad, Agent news/mail reader, NoteTab text editor, Opera web browser, and probably other programs. The shareware function will create a nag screen every time the program is started, after the initial 30 day trial has expired. There are reports that NJWIN (v1.6) will not work with Word Perfect 7. This has been tested in both Windows 95 and Windows 98. Also, only the 32-bit version will work with Windows 2000. 1.1.3 Unionway Another excellent viewer, able to use a Japanese font for a better display if you register it. Unfortunately, it makes the spacing for JIS encoded text look a little weird, although it is still perfectly readable. It can be downloaded (shareware) from . It will display text in many of the programs NJWIN will work with. 1.1.4 Mview This is another Japanese viewer. The font is of rather poor quality, although better quality fonts may be available for download. It will display text within Netscape 3. It is much cheaper than the other font viewers available. 1.1.5 Twinbridge ? 1.1.6 MSIE Japanese extensions This is available to download from . It includes the MS Gothic font, and provides a much better display for viewing Japanese within Internet Explorer than any other solution. Separate versions of this add-on exist for MSIE 3, 4, and 5. Once this has been downloaded and installed, other Japanese TrueType fonts can be used with MSIE if you have them available. 1.1.7 MS Office Japanese extensions On the MS Office 97 CD, there is an add-on to enable MS Office to display Japanese text. This includes a rather excellent TrueType font called MS Mincho. This will allow MS Word to properly any word files with the Japanese font. It won't help display text in other applications, unfortunately. Microsoft have, VERY quietly, posted MS Mincho on their website at . The file name in question is . You need to register with them to install it, but the product id no. for MSIE will suffice for this. The file jpnsupp.exe is also archived at the Monash FTP site. Note that even with these extensions, certain parts of MS Word, notably WordArt, will not support East Asian characters. 1.1.8 Basis Technology's Read Japanese This is designed to allow you to view Japanese documents under any language version of Windows 9x or NT. Clicking on Japanese words and Kanji will display the pronunciation, English meaning and more information. A demo version is available from . The demo available for download is crippled, but can be unlocked by registration. 1.1.9 Web Portals The following web sites allow any graphical web browser to display Japanese web pages, by converting the Japanese text into graphics. This will result in slower download times, but for those unable to install Japanese fonts, it is often the only solution. http://www.lfw.org/shodouka/ [Shoudoka] http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/filter/jgate/index.html http://www.dgs.monash.edu.au/~jwb/jviewer.html [ACCESS-J] 1.2 Typing Japanese text - Word Processors 1.2.1 JWP & JWPce There is only one real cheap solution... JWP, written by Stephen Chung (additional bits by various others). The best bit about it is that it is freeware! Look for all the files with 'jwp13' in their name. All the install files together are just over 6 Meg total size. It is in the form of a bunch of zip files at . JWPce is a freeware word processor inspired by JWP, but the code used has been completely re-written. It is optimised to run on the Windows CE operating system, but should run on any 32 bit Windows operating system. It includes some unicode support and better facilities for running it over a network, and, like JWP on which it is based, is downloadable from The current version of JWPce (v1.34) is incompatible with NJWIN, and will crash if it detects NJWIN running. 1.2.2 NJSTAR This is a shareware package, and the homepage is at . This program allows much more text formatting than JWP, but then, you pay for what you get. The dictionary lookup does not allow multiple dictionary files to be searched simultaneously, but it does allow searches based on a single character. The registered version can include what is advertised as 'TrueType' fonts. However, these are not genuine TrueType fonts, and cannot be used in other applications. It has a 'kanji of the day' feature to help you learn the kanji. This program can also save files in HTML format. When it does so, it inserts spaces between each Japanese character, to ensure that older web browsers can word wrap the text properly. 1.2.3 Entering Japanese text into MS Word 95/E and MS Word 97/E You will need either the MSIE Japanese IME add-on, or the NJSTAR Japanese word processor. First, you will need to type the text within the appropriate program, the copy and paste it into word. If you are using NJSTAR, you must paste the text as 'unformatted text'. Once you have pasted the text, you may need to set the font to an appropriate Japanese font for it to display the Japanese characters properly (you did install the MS Office Japanese extensions, didn't you?). An alternative solution is to type the text within JWPce. JWPce can then use cut and paste normally to MS Word. You may need to set the clipboard export format to unicode within the options dialogue box. 1.2.4 Neocor J-Text This is a simple (and FREE) Japanese word processor. It supports Japanese TrueType fonts if you have any installed on your system, but it does not come with such fonts. Also, only one Japanese font can be used per document. The kanji lookup system within the IME is not particularly sophisticated compared to JWP, and the dialogue window for entering kanji by radical lookup is unique. The program can be downloaded from . The program itself has numerous optional extras that can be downloaded from the website. It is essentially their method for marketing their other software. 1.2.5 MS Office 2000 This, with the addition of the Japanese IME, Word 2000 provides full support for Japanese text. However, tategaki (vertical text), requires a Japanese OS to function correctly. Some components of MS Office do not support Japanese text while running on English Windows. Excel 2000 does not have such support. All parts have full support for Japanese text when running on Japanese Windows. Under some circumstances, particularly if an older IME was installed, the Japanese IME may be disabled. If this happens, try uninstalling all IME-related programs, removing any Japanese font files from the Windows font folder, and then downloading the latest IME from the MS web site. This URL is currently: The following page may also prove useful in fixing Office 2000 problems: Because this program uses HTML natively, it can save files directly into HTML format. However, the code produced has a lot of extra HTML code designed to ensure round-trip compatibility with no loss of information. A downloadable utility removes some of this code, but it still cannot be considered a good HTML editor. The best approach is to use it to edit the code directly, and take advantage of the IME and ability to edit/save files as unicode. 1.2.6 Word perfect 2000 This program allows Japanese input, and can import files with Japanese from MS Word. However, WP files exported to MS Word 97 will have the Japanese garbled. This is due to their using a customised code page for Japanese, and not an official standard. 1.3 Typing Japanese text - Front End processors A front-end processor is a small program that intercepts the keystrokes on your keyboard and interprets this as Japanese encoded text. The more advanced ones will have increasingly sophisticated methods for selecting kanji characters. This is usually achieved by comparing the kana characters typed to an internal kanji dictionary. This is sometimes known as an IME (Input Method Editor). 1.3.1 MSIE IME This IME only works within MSIE 4+, MS Office, and MS Outlook Express. It can be used either when writing an email or Usenet post, or to fill sections of a form on a website. It is available from . Text written with this can be cut and pasted to any program that recognises Unicode, such as MS Word or JWPce. 1.3.1.1 MS IME - Windows 98 Issues An older version of the IME exists, which is not compatible with Windows 98. The version currently available (v5) should work flawlessly within Windows 98. 1.3.1.2 MS IME - version 5.x Microsoft released a new version of the IME for MSIE 5. This is functionally identical to the IME in version 4, but is designed to be compatible with a wider range of software. It should allow kana entry in any application within the 'Office 2000' family. Note specifically that it will not enable kana entry in older versions of MS Office software. 1.3.1.3 MS IME - Windows 2000 Windows 2000 (all versions) comes with an IME utility that is superior to all other IME utilities so far released by Microsoft. Note that it still won't allow Japanese text in programs not written to take advantage of this feature. Currently, this means MS Office, MSIE, and MSOE. 1.3.2 Unionway This will allow text entry in any program, formatted in SJIS or EUC or JIS (?) formats. The IME is rather difficult to use, but (as far as I know) is the only program to allow Japanese text entry in *any* application. Within a word processor, the Japanese font may sometimes cause word wrapping to malfunction. This is because of some complicated technical feature that I will not pretend to understand fully. The program can be downloaded from . 1.3.3 Kanjikit 97 This program has a user interface very similar to Unionway's product. The company's homepage is at: 1.3.4 NJCOM Latest from Hongbo Ni's stable is NJCOM, which extends the NJWIN viewer to include IMEs for Japanese, Chinese & Korean. Jim Breen has tried it out with both Netscape and IE, and reports that it works fine for Netscape, but had problems driving IE into his WWWJDIC forms (which appeared to be due to the forms having a preset "charset=euc-jp", and the resulting code conversions in IE/NJCOM). Apart from that, everything was fine. The down-loadable version from www.njstar.com, etc. is for a 30-day trial, but the licensed version is not expensive. In version 2.0, the program could only enter text directly as unicode when operating in Chinese input mode. This has now been fixed in the latest version. Also, the kanji lookup routines that are used, will fail to find the kanji when entering inflected forms of verbs and adjectives. 1.4 Japanese TrueType fonts Note: I am mainly listing fonts that are compatible with Unicode. There exist a number of fonts that claim to be Japanese, but are essentially 'dingbats' fonts. While Japanese documents could be created in a word processor using those fonts, the resulting text would be gibberish unless the person at the other end has the exact same font on their computer. If anyone knows of other Japanese TrueType fonts on the web, please email me. Bear in mind when downloading that Japanese fonts are huge - the smallest is about 2 megabytes. Japanese windows includes 2 Japanese fonts, named MS Mincho and MS Gothic (but written in kana). These fonts from the Japanese version of windows use the *.ttc format, which is not recognised by Western versions of Windows. Normal *.ttf Truetype fonts are fully compatible with both Japanese and Western versions of Windows, and the *.ttf files available to download from Microsoft are effectively identical to their Japanese equivalents. 1.4.1 MS Mincho This is part of the MS Office 97 extensions, and can be found on the CD with that product. is the current download URL. The file jpnsupp.exe is also archived at the Monash FTP site. This font is fully compatible with all versions of Windows. 1.4.2 MS Gothic This is part of the MSIE Japanese extensions, and can be installed from if you have MSIE 3 or MSIE 4. This font is fully compatible with all versions of Windows. 1.4.3 UWJMG3 (SJIS) This is Unionway's Japanese font. It is shareware and can be downloaded from . This font is fully compatible with all versions of Windows. 1.4.4 Bitstream Cyberbit Bitstream is no longer offering this font as a free download. It is currently available from Netscape at the URL below. This file is over 6 Mb in length, but the font effectively displays many different scripts. This font is fully compatible with all English versions of Windows. Note that because of the large file size, computers with low amounts of RAM memory may have problems with this font. 1.4.5 kanji112.zip kanji112.zip is a freely distributable True-Type Font set of 2500 kanji. The file is archived at the following locations. It should be bourne in mind that this is not a true unicode-compatible font, and documents created using this font are unlikely to be readable without this precise font. ftp://ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/kanji112.zip http://www.dtcc.edu/~berlin/font/japanese.htm This font was created by Jim Kurrasch, whose web page is at 1.4.6 Alis MMincho-Light This font is part of the Japanese add-on support for the web browser Tango, available to download from . The font is a slightly harder to read than MS Mincho, but is still perfectly functional. 1.4.7 Hero Hero This is a freeware trueType font available to doenload from . The font is compatible with English and Japanese versions of Windows, and the file is remarkably small for a Japanese font. Visually, the font is a handwritten scrawl, and fairly hard to read. 1.5 Displaying Japanese text within specific web browsers 1.5.1 MSIE 3, 4 & 5 The most sensible solution is to download the Japanese extensions from the Microsoft website at . It is free, and provides the best quality of all the solutions that work. NJWIN and Unionway will also display Japanese text within these programs. With MSIE 5, there is an option to leave downloading language support for any language until the first time you encounter a particular language. It may still be worth downloading support for those languages you expect to use at the same time you install the application itself. Conversely, there seems to be little point in ever downloading support for a language you do not understand, no matter how many times MSIE encounters it. Note that a language-specific version exists for Windows/jp, and support or add-on modules for MSIE-4/jp should be downloaded from: The home page for MSIE/jp is at: 1.5.2 NN 2 This version of netscape's browser requires some form of third party support to display Japanese. 1.5.3 NN 3 NJWIN will provide high quality results within this web browser. Netscape also supports Japanese TrueType fonts, albeit in a convoluted manner. The following method is taken from . 1 Install a Japanese font (see section 1.4). 2 To enable the Unicode flag within Netscape, you need to edit the Windows registry. The key in question is: "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\u005cSoftware\u005cNetscape\u005cNetscape Navigator\u005cINTL\u005c" 3 Select "Edit\u005cNew\u005cString Value" 4 Type "UseUnicodeFont" as the value name field and "1" at Value data field (do not type the quotes). 5 In Netscape, under "Options\u005cGeneral Preferences", select the Japanese font you installed earlier. 1.5.4 NN 4 Simply installing a Japanese font and telling NN to use this font should be enough to enable Netscape v4 to display Japanese web pages flawlessly. NJWIN also works well with this web browser. 1.5.5 Tabibito This web browser natively displays Japanese text with its own good quality bitmap font. This font unfortunately is not useable within other programs. Add-ons exist to enable the program to perform dictionary lookups on kanji within a web page. It can be downloaded from . 1.5.6 Opera v3 Opera at this stage of development does not have built-in language capability, but apparently it is planned for some future version. NJWIN currently appears to provide the best quality for browsing web sites within this program. However, if a site happens to be in Shift-JIS, and you happen to be viewing that site in Opera with a Japanese font, you will be able to read most of the Japanese. 1.5.7 Lynx for DOS NJWIN will, surprisingly, display Japanese text within this program, if you are running it within Windows and have not maximised the window. 1.5.8 Tango Tango is a web browser available from . It is available to download and use free for 30 days, after which it will be disabled by shareware protection. An add-on module enables Japanese support, and includes a Japanese truetype font. Various other add-ons support almost every major script in existance. 1.6 Software workarounds 1.6.1 Wrong country version workaround If you have bought software overseas that will not install because you are using the wrong country version of Windows 95, edit the registry entry which shows the country code before you install it. To do this, open the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\u005cSystem\u005cCurrentControlSet\u005ccontrol\u005cNIs \u005cLocale" and change the code. The UK one is 00000809; USA is 00000409, and for Japan it is 00000411. After the software is installed, you can change this key back. This was found in PC Format magazine (UK), contributed by Jonathan D Webb. I have not personally tested this workaround, so I cannot say if it works. 1.7 Educational software. JWP and many other applications include some kind of dictionary lookup function, most commonly using the Edict dictionary. Some also include a 'kanji of the day' function, which operates much like a flashcard program. This section will list dedicated learning programs. 1.7.1 Jverb A demo of this verb tutor program is available to download from [URL?]. 1.7.2 Transparent.com This company produces and sells three different packages relevant to learning Japanese: Power Japanese, Kanji Moments, and KidSpeak. Unfortunately, demos are not available to download and I do not have any reviews. 1.7.3 Kanjicard v1.7 A demo is available to download from the website below. The program prints and displays from a base of 1006 kanji. 701kb download for the demo, which contains a sample of 20 kanji. 1.7.4 Kanjidic Another flashcard program. A large (7mb) demo is available. 1.7.5 Itaiji-ten The people at Digital Design Technology have released Ver. 1.01 of the free software itaiji-ten, which is a little tool for converting ordinary kanji to itaiji (variant kanji characters). The software is available at (Japanese website). This program will only work on Japanese versions of Windows. 1.7.6 JquickTrans This is an integrated dictionary, basic translation and study system. It features TTF support, clipboard link, customisable radical lookup, dynamic dictionary changing, flash cards, edict/kanjidic support and more. It can be downloaded from . The download is 5.7 Mb, and includes the MS Gothic font. 1.7.7 Quick Kanji Code Converter The name says it all; this tool allows you to quickly convert the kanji code of any given Japanese text into shift-JIS, JIS, or EUC. (sort of like Ken Laux's "kakitori"). Download it from: http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA000501/ Macintosh, UNIX, Atari, ZX81, etc... Sorry, I haven't got a Mac, or any of the others, so I have no idea on these platforms. Gomen nasai. There is a deliberate decision not to put anything in this section as I am not personally able to verify any such information. This section number is included to point out that I am not ignoring these platforms by accident, but rather, by design. Those still looking are reminded that the soc.culture.japan FAQ, maintained by Shimpei Yamashita, has substantial information relevant to the UNIX and Mac platforms. That FAQ is available to download from If someone has an detailed account of software available for a specific computer platform, I will entertain suggestions for it to be included here, and giving that person co-author credit for that section. 2.0 Apple Macintosh Disclaimer: I do not own a Mac, and none of the following has been tested by me. All information in this section is reported from others. The Japanese Language kit was designed to enable Japanese support on a Mac. Due to enhancements in the latest version of the OS making it obsolete, it is no longer directly supported by Apple. MacOS 8.6e or higher should have integral support for Japanese. This language kit can still be purchased from third parties, such as . To read only: In the MacOS 8.5 installer (and also in OS 9 though I haven't got my copy yet) there is a custom installer option to install multilingual internet access. This allows you to view Internet pages (and other documents) in languages other than the standard European ones. In this option you should choose Japanese (Chinese, Korean are also available if I remember) and it will install the Japanese fonts (Osaka etc.) in your System Folder. Then in your browser's view menu choose Japanese (Auto-detect, shift-JIS or EUC-JP) and the web pages in japanese will be readable. You need Japanese language kit or the Japanese language version of MacOS to write Japanese text. The Japanese OS is supposed to have other goodies such as Macintalk which allows the computer to speak words in kana. [Patrick Dowling, Peter Pan, Glenn Giffen] 3.0 BeOS BeOS version 5.0 will be available for free download by 31-Mar-2000. It includes built-in support for Japanese. More details can be found at . This version can be installed onto a blank hard disc, or installed from within Windows. The download is expected to be between 40 to 60 Mb in size. 8.0 Links 8.1 Software producing companies This is a listing of home pages for companies that produce programs specifically for the purpose of Japanising a computer. Neocor http://www.lhsl.com/ [Lernout & Hauspie] Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/ Free Light Software http://www.flsw.com/ NJStar http://www.njstar.com/ Unionway http://www.unionway.com/ Japancan http://www.japancan.com/ Pacific Software http://www.pspinc.com/ Basistech http://www.basistech.com/ 8.2 Software archives The following sites allow anonymous access and generally contain a large amount of Japanese-related software. Monash ftp://ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/ Vector http://www.vector.co.jp/ (Japanese OS only) 8.3 Japanese-capable free Email servers Many Web sites now have free Email, but they do not all allow Japanese kana to be sent correctly. This is because some of them strip the control characters necessary to switch between English and Japanese, and others generate incorrect header information about the language of the sent Email, causing the receiving Email software to display it incorrectly. The following is a partial list of free web based Email services that are compatible with the extended character set needed to display Japanese. Of course, any service can display Japanese using romaji characters. http://www.excite.co.jp http://www.robotmail.ne.jp http://jmail.co.jp http://freemail.goo.ne.jp also has a comprehensive index of Email servers, with listings for most languages in the world. 8.4 Websites for learning Japanese The following URLs have websites designed to help those studying Japanese. 8.4.1 Lessons http://homepages.enterprise.net/walrus/school/msj/root/home.htm The "Manga School of Japanese" was created by a student in Manchester, UK. A good introduction to basic Japanese grammar, written in a fun style. http://www.geom.umn.edu/~burchard/nihongo/ A thorough, if confusing, table showing almost all the verb conjugations. http://www.japanesetutor.com/ "Japanese Tutor" is an index of sites intended to help Japanese teachers and students. http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/visitors/kenji/lis-stud.htm This contains an index of mailing lists relevant to language students, including a few of use for students of Japanese. http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/ "Teach Yourself Japanese" is a good site teaching basic Japanese. It makes extensive use of Java applets to enhance the lessons. http://www.playground.net/~tomm/LanguageStrucureNotes.htm A set of half-completed notes explaining some basic grammar points. Each page concentrates on a single item in depth. 8.4.2 Dictionaries The dictionary listings have been moved to the HTML pages that support this Internet FAQ. 8.4.3 Other http://www.mapion.co.jp/ http://www.mapion.co.jp/html/map/web/japan.html An online interactive map of Japan. Not exactly educational, but very useful to anyone intending to visit Japan. This site is in Japanese only. http://www.twics.com/~takakuwa/search/search.html This is a list of search engines, over 600 in all. There is a separate section within this page that covers japanese specific search engines. http://www.cic.sfu.ca/tqj/ This website contains interesting discussions on various aspects of the Japanese language. http://bookweb.kinokuniya.co.jp/ The online presence for a major Japanese bookstore. 9.0 Boring bit 9.0.1 Legal Disclaimer This document carries no guarantee of accuracy whatsoever. No mention of a product in this document constitutes a recommendation or an endorsement for its use by the author. The absence of a product should not be construed as implied criticism of that product. Some efforts have been made to provide varying degrees of accuracy of the information presented here, but some estimates have not been verified or updated with time. Should you find any mistakes, please contact the maintainer. 9.0.2 Copyright notice This document is copyright (c) Fabian van-de-l'Isle 1998-2001. This document may be quoted freely for non-commercial purposes; please make appropriate acknowledgment when doing so. The document should be identified either as the "Japanisation FAQ for computers running Western Windows", or by the filename . The official page for this FAQ, and to which Internet links should be made, is . This document and associated web pages may be freely redistributed by electronic or printed means provided that no money is charged for its distribution and that this copyright and redistribution notice remains attached. Any modification to the original text must be explicitly documented. This document may not be redistributed commercially (e.g., on a CD-ROM) without an explicit written permission from the copyright owner. Any distributor that does obtain a permission will be required to keep this entire document intact, and explicitly notify its customers that the newest revisions of this document may be freely obtained from other sources. Thanks are due to Jim Breen and others for corrections and additions to various items in this FAQ. 9.0.3 Contact information The author (Fabian van-de-l'Isle) can be contacted at lajzar at lineone dot net. Spam sent to this address will be killfiled. My personal homepage is . 9.0.4 Concerning URLs Concerning URLs: The Internet is dynamic, and URLs are likely to change without notice. If a listed link is out of date, please tell me so I can mark it as such. If you have a valid updated link, please tell me that too. -- -- Fabian The gods have a way of blowing off mistakes of that kind as some sort of grand scheme.