Can I write Japanese on my trackpad?

I see Mac OS 10.6 has a new Chinese character input via the trackpad. This looks really cool, but I can't find a detailed description of it, so I'm not sure if I can use it.

• Can I use it to enter kanji? I know nothing about Chinese, apart from hearing that kanji uses Chinese characters. But Apple says nothing about kanji or Japanese. Are the characters identical across languages? Is there anything I'll be missing?

• Can I use it to enter kana, too?

• Can I use it on my Macbook? It's a 2GHz Core2Duo, so it's a couple years old, and probably doesn't have the newest trackpad.

Thanks!

Solution 1:

The Chinese character input will also recognise the Japanese kanji (seeing the are pretty much the same thing). However, it will not recognise kana.

Additionally, the Chinese character input requires a modern Macbook with a multitouch trackpad. To determine if you have one of these, go to System Preferences > Trackpad. If your's looks like this:

Then it means you have a multitouch trackpad. Otherwise, you are just out of luck.

Solution 2:

Well, some character are different for example 步 in Chinese and 歩 in Japanese (or almost every one with the 米 radical), and in general the Traditional Chinese characters are more the same with the Japanese Kanji than the Simplified Chinese ones. But it is possible to enter most of the Kanji using this Traditional Chinese input method system.