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Japanese Characters Print E-mail

To use this site, you will need a browser that can display Japanese characters. But for some of you, Japanese fonts may not appear as they should. In some cases they appear as square boxes, or question marks. To check if you can read Japanese fonts, check if the following two boxes contain similar characters.

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If they appear somewhat similar, everything is peachy, and you can go on using this site. Otherwise you will have to install Japanese fonts on your computer. Depending on what system you have, read one of the following sections.

Windows

  
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Internet Explorer

If you are using Internet Explorer it should be enough to to go a Japanese site like the Yomiuri newspaper (follow this link), and it will automatically recognize this, asking you to install the required fonts.

When this is done, you should be able to read (or at least see) Japanese text. If you install the support for japanese character input (IME), described below, everything should work, if the description above didn't make it for you.

 
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Firefox

For some people it seems to work immediately reading Japanese characters with Firefox. But it seems that in many cases you will have to install Japanese fonts. These are easiest installed on your computer by surfing with Internet Explorer into a page like Yomiuri newspaper (follow this link).

 
 

Writing Japanese Characters 

For Windows XP, Japanese character input is included in every installation. You just have to enable it. This may however need the XP installation cd. For more info, check out the following link.

For Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft provides a free program called IME. This program enables you to write Japanese characters on a non-japanese windows. Read more at Microsoft's site using the link above.

Linux

  
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I do not know much about Japanese character support in Linux or other Unix-type systems. But the following links should probably get you started.

Apple/Mac

  
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Christopher Bolton has put together an illustrative and thorough explaination about how to use Japanese characters on an Apple computer. 

http://redcocoon.org/cab/mysoft.html