alt + shift scrolls through installed languages on your computer. When you switch to Japanese, it will probably still be on romaji input so press alt + ~ to switch to japanese input.
Another handy shortcut is F7, which tranforms the kana you are typing into katakana.
Yeah learning Japanese is really not that easy. I'm almost 2.5 years into a Japanese double major at uni and, having never been to Japan, I'm still not super confodent in the language because there are always nuances that you don't understand until you really get into using it.
BTW, I know it was ages ago, but those people saying "learn 2000 kanji and the kana scripts and that should be enough to get by" are not terribly well-informed or are getting confused with Chinese or perhaps have taken some other route to being wrong. 1945 kanji are prescribed for the standard highschool education, a lot Japanese people, unless they go to college/uni in Japan, don't learn more than that in their lives, and just slowly forget how to write them because word processors are used so they don't actually have to write them (especially Japanese ex-pats). Then you have the 2 scripts, which obviously you will learn first and they aren't that hard.
FYI in my extended(double) major, at the end of the
3rd year i.e. After I've
finished university I will have studied (and am supposed to be able to read AND write, but I won't because Kanji is
hard) 1000 kanji, which is the amount Japanese people learn in Primary school. After that, I guess I have to study them on my own, which I'm not good at doing. I need to be institutionalised and regularly assessed in order to learn Kanji.
