Microsoft offers a free program Global IME to be downloaded at Microsoft Official site. You can "japanise" your Windows 95/98/ME/NT with it, and don't need to buy a Japanese computer or install Japanese Windows to write/read its particular scripts. The menu and help remain in English.

However, it unfortunately has several limits in the functions. First, it is applicable only to Internet Explorer 4.0/5.0 (or greater) and Outlook Express 4.0/5.0 (or greater). Sorry, Netscape users....you need to change your browser to IE. Second, The only corresponding application other than IE and Outlook Express is MS Word 2000, but the font is limited to Mincho style only. Third, Japanese documents are supposed to be printed out in all the IBM compatible printers, but there ARE some printers, which can't properly work, although such a problem is most probably solved by installing a new driver into it.

Are you disappointed? Well, it's free, anyway.
Global IME started to be offered as an additional program for the existing Operating Systems, while Microsoft was working hard on the multi-language compatible one in the future, such as Windows 2000. If you don't intend to buy Windows 2000, be satisfied with Global IME at the moment, or go to Links and consider buying a commercially available Front End Processor (FEP).

Once you installed Global IME into your computer, you would be able to read and write Japanese in Internet Explorer, for example to type hiragana, katakana and kanji in any intractive websites (you may have seen such websites for WWW worksheets or even credit card payments). The students can exercise how to write E-mails in Japanese at Hotmail site or by using Outlook Express. Surfing and reading Japanese websites might also expand the lesson activities, using school computers.
Go to How to Install Global IME 5.02