How-To: Change the System Locale and setup the Language Bar for Japanese Games [Windows 7/8/8.1]


Ad: Buy Girls Und Panzer Merch from Play Asia!

Maiku_Ando

-sama
Staff member
Leader Council
This is a guide on how to setup the Language Bar and change the System Locale to Japanese for playing Visual Novels and other Japanese games that are originally designed to run on a Japanese Windows system.

Note this guide is based on Windows 7 and includes updates for Windows 8/8.1, for Windows 10 please use the guide HERE.

1. Open the control panel from the start menu (right click the start button in windows 8) and go to 'Clock, Language, and Region' and choose 'Region and Language' (Language in Windows 8.1).

med_gallery_1_15_8244.png


2. Go to the 'Keyboards and Languages' tab and click 'Change Keyboards'. In Windows 8.1, click 'Add a Language'.

med_gallery_1_15_21539.png


3. In the popup, you want to add a new input language, scroll down the list until you get to Japanese, then press the + button to expand the levels, you want to add Microsoft IME under Keyboard.
In Windows 8.1 it automatically selects the Microsoft IME, and you don't need to do this step.

med_gallery_1_15_33263.png


Press OK to add it in.

4. Now we need to change the locale.
In windows 7, this is within the Region and Language section as a tab at the top.
In Windows 8.1, you need to go back one level in Control Panel and choose 'Region' instead.
Choose the 'Administrative' tab. Then on the lower section it will show the the current locale, if it says Japanese then its fine, if not press the button 'Change System Locale'.

med_gallery_1_15_6495.png



5. Choose 'Japanese (Japan)' and press 'OK'. The system will need to restart to make the changes.

gallery_1_15_532.png


You will now be able to run and install Japanese software.

6. To enable the language bar on the task bar, simply right click it and choose 'Language Bar' under tool bars.
It will look something like this:

gallery_1_15_904.png


The highlighted option will change the input type to Hiragana. This is what you will need for entering in Captchas.
 
Oh with having the locale in Japanese you still can have your keyboard and other programs run in English as well. This just makes certain games that were made in Japn playable to those outside of Japan.

So none of the programs that would be in English to begin with will be affected by this change. So it is best to leave it under a Japanese locale for this fact. :p
 
Playasia - Play-Asia.com: Online Shopping for Digital Codes, Video Games, Toys, Music, Electronics & more
Back
Top