Most computers with English as the primary language don’t have the Asian characters installed, (Macs are the exception, and possibly linux machines) so we have to do it ourselves.

Windows Xp with Office Xp
Windows Xp without Office Xp

Or, use this good guide to install the asian characters:
http://www.coscom.co.jp/help3/jpfont/step1-install.html

If these don’t work, or you don’t want to install big applications, many browsers are able to see identify the characters. You just need to tell it what to look for.

Internet Explorer

1. Go to “View,” and the “Encoding”
2. Select “Japanese (Auto-Select)”

Firefox

1. Go to “View,” and then “Character Encoding”
2. Select “Auto-Detect,” and then “Japanese”

Safari

1. Go to “View,” and then “Character Encoding”
2. Select “Unicode”*

Google Chrome

1. Click the paper icon on the right side ofthe menu & then Encoding
2. Select “Unicode”*

**(You can pick Japanese, but it didn’t function right for me. I’m going to test it on my other machine w/o the IME)

Other:
NJ STAR Japanese Word Processor (you can type Japanese even if you don’t get any of the stuff above!)