MJC : Final Week Part 1

Salam and hello to all. Yosh.. After about 7 weeks, so this week is the last week for our にほんご　のコルス. Haha, did I write correctly? What I tried to write is Nihon-go no Course. Haha.. Sorry if there are any mistakes. Please correct me then.

Finally, after I explored a bit in Microsoft Help for how to change my keyboard layout so that I’ll able to write in Nihon-go without to use any kind of font, now, I able to write my name in にほんご using the ordinary keyboard. For example, my name in にほんご is written like this.

ムハマド　イッザト　ビン　ルスラン。

In roman, it will be Muhamado Izzato Bin Rusuran. I need to write this way so the Microsoft IME will translates what I write correctly. So, if you want to know how to change your keyboard layout so that you can write in Japan language. Here, I provide the steps on how to do this. Its actually simple and only takes a few minutes to do it.

Ok, here are the steps.

• Go to your “Control Panel” (Start menu > Control Panel).
• Click “Clock, Language and Region” then double click “Regional and Language Options”. Or if the Control Panel is in classic view, simply double click “Regional and Language Options”.
• In Regional and Language Options, click at Keyboards and Languages tab. Then click “Change Keyboards…”. The “Text Services and Input Languages” dialog box pop-up. There will be a list, which language and keyboard layout you’re currently used. The default will be English (United States) and keyboard layout is US.

• Next step is, click Add. Then the “Add Input Language” dialog box pop-up. There will a long list of languages that you can select. Ok, in this case, find Japanese (Japan). Expand the list of Japanese (Japan). Then, you can see 2 options, which is keyboard and other. Ok, tick on Japanese and Microsoft IME and also Ink Correction. Then, press ok.
• Now, you done. Check back the “Text Services and Input Languages”. There should be 2 languages now. One is English (United States) and another one is Japanese (Japan). If you can see both languages so it means that you’re already able to write in Japanese.
• In “Text Services and Input Languages”, click Language Bar tab. Make sure the language bar is set to be floating on desktop. Then Ok.

Now, if you notice, there is a language bar floating on your desktop and there will be 2 options of languages for you to choose whenever you want to use it. For example if you want to use or want to write in Japanese characters, simply choose Japanese (Japan) and start writing in Japanese.

When Japanese language is selected, there is some setting on the language bar. The important one is make sure Microsoft IME is selected. Otherwise, you can’t write in Japanese. Since there are two types of characters in Japanese which are Hiragana and Katakana, so make sure you set first you want to write in Katakana or Hiragana. There are options in Input Mode which you may select to write in Hiragana, full-width Katakana and others. Another one is if you don’t want the characters to be converted to Kanji characters, you can select No Conversion in Conversion Mode. Ok, that’s it. Hope now you’ll be able to write in Japanese using your ordinary keyboard. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask me, just simply drop your questions in the comment box. I’ll try to answer it.

The steps above are based on Windows Vista Home Premium, I think it should be the same in Windows XP.

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So for this week, since its our last week, so what we did is only the revision of what we have learnt before. For two days, we had ふくしゅ or revision about にほんご grammar, vocabs and Kanji. Huh, Kanji is a bit difficult to remember. I think I need to focus more on this. Anyway, its help a lot to refresh back of what we had learnt before.

Ok, a bit about our last day performance. As I mentioned in the previous MJC post, we need to form into a group and sing a Japanese song titled Kokoro Bana. So we had done with the song itself, looks like everyone now able to sing the song. Hehehe. And for the dance part, we also had done. For dance, we had simple body gestures during singing the song. Haha, sometimes simple is better, right? Because we want to enjoy singing the song and for me, no need to do such complicated body gestures. I think our group got the simplest body gestures compare to other groups. I think la, not so sure about it. Huhu. Anyway, yesterday, both of our 2 lecturers came to class. One of them was wondering how the student can find the lyric of Kokoro Bana song on the internet. Somehow he said that the lyric shouldn’t be on the internet and he said he already blocked that. I’m not sure if he just joking but it seems he looks serious. He even said “I tak puas hati la. Macam mana you all boleh dapat lirik ni kat internet. I dah blocked dah.”. I’m not sure what he means by “blocked” but I think it is not impossible to get the lyric on the internet since anyone can write it and publish it on the internet. Is it written the lyric of song and publish it on the internet is prohibited? Lols.. Sure I don’t know if there is such regulation. I just wondering if it is prohibited since my blog listed as the third result in Google for the keyword “Kokoro Bana” and I wrote the lyric of the song in my previous MJC post. If it is prohibited, then I won’t mind to remove it immediately. Hmmm.. Anyway, I already explained to my sensei that the lyric is from a Japanese lyrics website. No idea of what to say.

So, that’s all. Today we will perform our performance. Huh, hopefully we can do all the best we can do. And for other groups がんばって　ください！　じゃ、また。