http://www.ghastlycomic.com/d/20050417.html
(cartoon offensive and not safe for work)
Anybody know of a free Japanese text input tool I could use for this?
I’m not really sure what you mean by “Japanese text input tool” - do you know Japanese and want to write in Japanese characters, or do you want to translate English words to Japanese for inputting?
In anyway, try this excellent dictionary:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwjdic?1C
You can enter words in English and it will translate it to Japanese (which you then can cut and paste into Google) - or if you know a Japanese word, but cannot write it with Japanese characters, write it using normal Roman letters (be sure to check the “romanized Japanese” box) and it will translate to correct Japanese.
Dunno how well Google Seppuku would actually work though… Can’t say I’ve ever found any images that bad…
On that link, you can click [GI] next to whatever word you found in the dictionary and it’ll do the google image searching for you. Just sayin…
On WinXP, go to control panel, then ‘regional and languages’. Go the middle option and click ‘details’ in the first section. Click ‘add’ and scroll down to Japanese and add it. You are done!
I believe you have to add East Asian language support before Japanese will be an option in that list. To do so, click on the checkbox of the Languages tab in the aforementioned Regional and Languages applet, and then on the OK button. After East Asian support is installed, kimera’s instructions will make the Japanese Input Method Editor (IME) available.
You will need your Windows CD to install the IME, but then you’re set to go.
If that’s all you want to do, I suggest you find a Japanese web site and do a random cut-and-paste instead. The East Asian language support for Windows adds over 100MB, IIRC, and can cause other annoying side-effects (e.g. MS Office asking for its own East Asian language support and changing some defaults).
In trying to find out what Google Seppuko is, I found this link:
http://forums.keenspace.com/viewtopic.php?p=847235
where someone asks the same exact question and appears to get an answer that helps him.