Language toolbar question

[Lusankya]

Hormones have demanded that I write an email in Japanese, but I have an odd problem with the langauge toolbar that I can't overcome.

I have Asian language fonts on my computer, and I've selected Japanese as one of my languages, but for some reason, it won't change my conversion mode from direct input to hiragana. All of the other options seem to be working normally... it's just that one option in the toolbar that I can't change.

I've found some software to help me for the moment, but it's not an ideal situation. Any ideas on how I can fix this?

[XaLEv]

Have you tried the keyboard shortcuts alt+`, alt+capslock and ctrl+capslock?

Setting Japanese in hiragana mode as the default and restarting might do something.

[Lusankya]

Yeah. I've tried the keyboard shortcuts. I'm not sure how to set it into hiragana mode as default. If I have to go tools -> properties, then that doesn't seem to work either (because selecting anything tools works just as well as selecting anything in input mode).

Also, ometimes (and only when I'm trying to use Japanese - not when I'm trying to use Chinese), the language toolbar goes all grey and useless for a while. A part of me thinks that it's a huge conspiracy by China to screw with any Japanese people who want to use their computers.

[XaLEv]

Right click on the language bar and choose settings. Set it to Japanese IME in the default input language at the top, then select it from the installed services below, hit the properties button and set the default input mode there.

the language toolbar goes all grey and useless for a while

I had a problem like that a while back. I think I fixed it from the options dropdown that opens when you click the down arrow in the lower right corner of the language bar.