Japanese keyboard where each button is a Kana

Question

I remember seeing a Japanese keyboard sometime ago where each button mapped directly to a Japanese letter, for example there was keys for か and き.

Oftentimes I feel that my typing in Japanese is very slow and sometimes I wonder if it would be helpful for me to use a keyboard like that, or at least change my computer's configuration so I could type that way (though it would require painting over my keys, or memorizing each letter). It seems clear that this would be much more efficient in terms of the reduced number of strokes for most of the letters.

My question is whether this type of keyboard/input system is used commonly in Japan, or if Japanese people have just gotten used to typing "k a" for か.

EDIT: I am looking mostly for information about how many people actually use a keyboard like this on the desktop, and am not much interested in mobile.

Answer 1

I'm only going off of personal experience, But I'd say 80~90% of the Japanese people use ローマ字入力 (roman letter input). And most of those who use かな入力 (kana input) are older, 35 and up.

Definitely, かな入力 is much more efficient. You can type over twice the speed of ローマ字入力. But it takes a lot to learn, and not all keyboards nowadays have the keys printed on them. Plus, with so much English in the Japanese language, you're still going to have to learn the English keyboard, so it's twice the work.

But it is a must in workplaces that do a lot of typing. I know a few people who work for publications and they are incredibly good at かな入力.

Answer 2

Computers sold in Japan have a keyboard like the one below:

You can use it in two modes: kana-input and romaji-input. Romaji-input is what you use all the time and kana-input allows you to directly input the kana printed on the keys.

From what I have seen a lot of people tend to use the romaji-input even in Japan.

You can use this disposition with all keyboards (you just have to specify kana-input in your IME) but if you look closely you will see that there are some extra keys that are not on a traditional keyboard: 無変換・変換・ひらがな　カタカナ・半角／全角. To make use of that you will have to remap them to weird combinations like ctrl [+ alt] + key, which is not very convenient.

The 変換 key has the same behaviour as the space key on a regular keyboard, the space key allows to choose between hiragana and katakana version of a word, and 無変換, 半角／全角 do exactly what it should.

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Indeed, you could improve your typing speed and reduce key-misses (eg. typing i in place of o just after k). Personally, I have considered making the switch but in fact I do not think fast enough in Japanese so the limiting factor is not my typing speed. I think that is also a point to consider, because if your limiting speed is not your typing speed there is no reasons to learn a new keymap.

Answer 3

http://neutral.x0.com/home/sushida/play3.html
http://typing.twi1.me/game/1622

I think these pages of online typing lessons for Japanese will be good if you want to learn Japanese typing.
In actuality, a conversion key is used additionally.