Assuming Microsoft's Japanese IME is still a dumpster fire, and the Google one has not succumbed to Googleshitification, that would be a way to go.

To enable the Microsoft IME there are some rituals to go through like adding the Japanese language and then a Japanese keyboard under that. It will download some materials, like fonts and dictionaries. A reboot is typically not required, I think, unless you make Japanese the primary language.

Once you have the keyboard, LeftShift + LeftAlt chord goes among the input methods. Ctrl + CapsLock toggles hiragana/romaji input. I think these are the same for Google or MS input.

It might sound complicated at first, but you can do it pretty fast once you get used to it.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/globalization/input/japane...

You can see the same game go by three different names on a community forum, Wikipedia, and a catalogue of games + md5sums for a system (you might think the md5sum could act as a Rosetta Stone here… but less so than you’d think, especially in the specific context of an English speaker and Japanese games, as you sometimes need some specific, old, oddball and slightly-broken dump of a game to get the one a particular English patch requires… and god knows what name you’ll find that under, but probably not the same md5sum as a clean dump)

The only bright spot in this is that if you can find a Japanese game on Wikipedia the very first superscript-citation almost always lists the official Japanese title in Japanese script on hover. That’s a life saver. (Presumably all of this is easier if you know at least some Japanese)

Though after I posted my comment I realized they mean they’re switching to another existing system (which I think is already widely used in gaming circles? Not sure though) which isn’t so bad. At least it’s not another one being added to the mix.