Japanese on Symbian

[introduction]
So, I found myself suddenly having to buy a new phone, since the previous one committed suicide by falling off my pocket. (I couldn't fix it myself, and its plastic parts broke so badly that even if I had it repaired it would break soon again, so I didn't want to waste any money on that). I love Maemo but I couldn't afford a N900 so I had to settle for a cheaper phone that runs Symbian.

What I love about Symbian is that it's kinda hackable! Having a WiFi phone, I downloaded PuTTY and now I can happily ssh to my favorite shells (or not so happily since I actually couldn't afford a phone with a qwerty keyboard either...) But that's not a hack, it's rather a legitimate application to install.

Then I wanted to install a Japanese font to it. I already couldn't figure out the titles of some of my songs and had told my Japanese friends to text me in Romaji, but now I had other issues as well, such as not being able to figure out who is who on my contact lists. Not to mention a built-in dictionary application with Japanese support...
[/introduction]

So I went to the Nokia store and asked if they could install a Japanese font for me. They said that all they could do was to install the Japanese firmware instead, which I didn't want to do for obvious reasons. So I decided to ask Google sensei instead, and that's when I felt a bit 1337.

Turns out that you can just find out the names of your built-in fonts and place a font of the same name on your memory card. It will happily override your built-in fonts. http://japanesefont.blogspot.com/ is where I found the instructions and it even recommended a font, which I ended up ditching for another, more "proper" font with less missing glyphs. Whatever font you use, it will work. Just pick one from your hard drive.

Then I wanted to see if there was a way for Japanese input without the Japanese firmware. Yes, there is! If you have a S60 3rd edition (like me), it's even free. Here it is: http://digilife.bz/eng/wiki/index.php?M-FEP60 . Downloads are unavailable at the moment due to a bug, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

EDIT: You can install M-FEP60, you just need to go to the application in order to switch Japanese input on and off - what doesn't work is the switcher. Otherwise, it works, though its dictionary might use several additions.