Install Japanese Smileys in Windows XP

As you probably know, Japanese smileys look different from Western smileys. Just to give you a basic idea, in Japan people commonly type (^_^) instead of :)

If you want to use Japanese smileys, there's an easy way to adopt them to your Japanese word bank (or dictionary) in Windows XP so that you can bring them up with little effort.



Follow these 12 steps:

1. Download this text file.
   
2. Open a fresh text document (eg. in Notepad).
   
3. Switch the language in your language bar to JP.
   
4. Right-click the JP icon.
   
5. Click Additional icons in taskbar.
   
6. Click Tools (or the icon that looks like a toolbox).
   
7. Select Dictionary Tool.
   
8. Click on Tool and select Import Text file...
   
9. Select the file kaomoji.txt that you just downloaded a while ago, and Open.
   
10. Exit when the progress bar has reached 100%.
    
11. Close the Microsoft IME Dictionary Tool.
    
12. Go back to your text file and test it out by typing kao and hitting [SPACE] a couple of times. If it gives you a list of smileys you're done!

Now that you've successfully installed the smileys, you can check how to select the ones that you want by going back to the Dictionary Tool. Within the Dictionary Tool, you'll see Reading and Word. Reading is the term that you input to get the respective Word. For example, かお (kao) is the Reading for all the smileys (Words) that you saw on the list in step 12. If you want to add your own smileys, you can do it by clicking Add (or Edit -> Add...) in the Dictionary Tool, and inputting the Readings and Words that you want to use. You should also set the 'Part of Speech' attribute to 顔文字 to let the application know that it's a smiley and not a real word. You can also delete smileys from the Dictionary Tool list by highlighting a smiley and clicking on the Delete icon (or Edit -> Delete...)