Typing Japanese on an Android tablet

Hello again everyone.

Apologies if this subject has already been addressed in another post!

My parents are lending me their Android tablet for my trip to Japan, and I'll be using it for communicating in Japanese with my Japanese friends and contacts there.

Could anyone give me some information on how I go about typing Japanese (kanji and kana) on an Android tablet? I need to add Japanese capability to the virtual keyboard. Is it as simple as downloading an app? I remember setting up Japanese capability on Windows XP and Vista was overly complicated, so I'm hoping it'll be much simpler with Android!

I'll be writing e-mails, instant messages and possibly Skype to mobile phone texts in Japanese.

Many thanks in advance!

Yes, it can be done simply by downloading an app.

I use Google Japanese Input and found it quite user-friendly.

download app 'SHIMEJI'..one of the best IME/Keyboard for japanese/english input

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adamrocker.android.i...

naes, tanshin, many thanks! Sorry for my slow reply.

I've encountered an interesting problem with Google Japanese Input and I'm just wondering if it's something to do with me rather than the app!

When I try to type words with kana like じゃ,
りょ, ぱ and so on, the app sometimes stutters and inputs only the word up to the kana in question (for example: when I try to write 「無料」, the app stutters and inputs only 「むりょ」; when I start a word like 「両親」, the app stutters and inputs only 「りょ」; when I try to write my own name (James) the app sometimes only gets as far as 「ジ」 but it occasionally lets me get as far as 「ジェ」!).

It only does this sometimes, and I've found a few ways of working around the problem with the help of the app's predictive text, but I'm just wondering if I'm doing something wrong! Or maybe there's a compatability issue with the tablet I'm using or something like that. I haven't been able to find any reason for the stutter - it seems completely random, but only happens when I have to modify base kana. It'll somehow be a comfort to know whether I'm the only one with this problem!

Sorry for my poor explanation... I taught myself to write kana so I never picked up all the proper terminology to explain things!

I've been experimenting with both Google Japanese Input and Simeji, and I've found out that neither of them work properly with Gmail when it's accessed through the Chrome internet browser.

Happily they both work beautifully (Simeji being closest to what I'm used to with my Windows IME) with Gmail when I access it through the Gmail app.

Thanks again for your help!