==Getting Japanese onto FreeBSD==
By Nathan Butcher 2006.12.6

This is a quick and easy way to get Japanese input onto FreeBSD.
There seems to be a real overload of different conversion engines and
input method editors available in ports, but you only really need to 
enable SCIM with Anthy support to get something functional.

/usr/ports/japanese/scim-anthy
/usr/ports/japanese/scim-tables

and for some truetype fonts:

/usr/ports/japanese/kochi-ttfonts
/usr/ports/japanese/sazanami-ttfonts
/usr/ports/japanese/mikachan-ttfonts
/usr/ports/japanese/monafonts-ttf

Edit your xorg config, or create one with "xorgconfig" if you haven't already.
(You will find the xorg.config in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 if you have one.)

Add the following FontPath line:-

	FontPath	"/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType/"

Edit your user ~/.xprofile file (or make one if it doesn't exist)
and add the following lines:-

export XMODIFIERS='@im=SCIM'
export GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"
export QT_IM_MODULE="scim"
export LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8
export LC_MESSAGES=C
scim -d &

These environment variables will enable SCIM to start up automatically when
your user logs in. Note that in the above I have set system messages to 
POSIX C (I still want to read them in English).
Being an X application, SCIM will not start if executed as root.

You can make your desired display manager boot up from /etc/ttys
simply edit the line:-

	ttyv8	"/usr/local/bin/kdm -nodaemon"  xterm  on  secure

You can (of course) choose another window manager other than KDM

SCIM should automatically be set up to enable Japanese by hitting CTRL and space.
With a 106 Japanese keyboard, the hankaku/zenkaku button works just like in
Windows by default. If you are using an English keyboard, you may like to assign 
the Windows key of your keyboard to swap between English and Japanese input.

And that's it!