Since we'll be needing to type Japanese for a significant portion of our studies, we need to make sure that our computers are equipped to handle Japanese characters.

Here are instructions for installing keyboards for other languages on Windows 8, and here are the instructions for Mac OS X 10.6. I also found some instructions written specifically for Japanese on this website.

Typing in Japanese can be a bit tricky at times. I am planning to write an awesome and informative article about this… but… uh, yeah, that hasn't happened yet.

Tae Kim's site has some notes about it on this page. Also, there's a Wikipedia article about it here.

Best of luck to all of your digitally impaired kids!