Native Japanese OS using Vista Ultimate

May 9, 2008 4:07 PM by Rick Noelle

If you would like to install and run native Japanese software on your non-Japanese PC, you can now do this pretty easily using Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate.  The way you accomplish this is by installing the Japanese multi-user interface (MUI) language pack and then setting your display language to Japanese.  Note that you must be running Vista Ultimate or Enterprise to have access to this feature.  It is not available in the Home or other editions. 

I was pretty excited to try this.  In the old days I used to run a copy of Japanese Windows 98 which I had purchased while living in Sapporo.  I thought it was neat to see the "Start" menu displayed as スタート and have access to all of the other Japanese versions of things.  At the time I didn't have much of a need to run Japanese software but I still had a good time experimenting with it.  Ultimately I would end up reverting back to English and have to reinstall my entire OS.  That is not a very convenient way to manage your operating system.  With Windows Vista Ultimate, they have made things very easy.  In my case, I purchased an OEM copy of US English 32 bit Vista Ultimate from a local PC retailer called Microcenter.  I purchased it for $149 which I thought was very reasonable.  (If you don't live near a Microcenter, you can buy the OEM version from NewEgg or other similar web sites for about the same cost.  Note that OEM versions are usually reserved for system builders and do not come with any kind of support).  Once the installation is complete, you simply go into the Windows Update tool and under optional components, choose Japanese, click "Update" and then wait.  Be prepared to wait awhile as the update can take 30-45 minutes or more.  Also, you should not run other applications while it is updating.  After the update is complete, go into the Control Panel and select Regional and Language Options and then choose Keyboards and Languages.  You will see a "Choose a display language" drop-down under which you should see 日本語.  Select it and click OK.  After that you reboot your computer and you are good to go. 

A good way to test that everything is working is to download and install some Japanese software.  I tested my install with the Japanese version of Yahoo Messenger, Toolbar and Widgets.  Initially I had not set my locale to Japanese so the install dialog showed garbled characters (文字化け).  After changing the locale however, everything looked great.  I really felt like I was using a native copy of Japanese Windows Vista.

I did run into one "gotcha".  Initially when I installed Vista I ran all the Windows critical updates prior to the Japanese language pack update.  There were about 50 or them that I had to install.  After those finished I tried to install the language pack but I received a "Code 2 Error".  Apparently this is pretty common and Microsoft has a knowledge base article dealing with it and a patch you can download to correct it.  I tried the patch but it did not work for me.  I ran the Japanese language update at least 4-5 times but each time it failed.  In the end, I did a fresh install of Vista and ran the Japanese language pack update FIRST.  This worked.  After that I ran all of the other updates and everything continued to work fine.

I took a few screen shots of this process which you can view by clicking here.  At the time of this writing, I have been running Vista in Japanese mode for about a week and so far everything is going great.