One little-known feature of the Japanese Input tools on OS X is the ability to easily access a whole lot of unicode symbols without having to go dig through the Character Palette each and every time. If you enable Japanese Input (also known as Kotoeri<\/i>) on your mac, hitting a keyboard shortcut (apple-space by default, I think) will toggle kana input on and off, whereby you can type japanese words in kanas and press the spacebar to pick a matching kanji (followed by ‘enter’ to validate the transliteration).
\nThe nifty bit comes from the availability of UTF-8 characters that are not kanji, but nonetheless useful in a lot of situations. Just as any other kanji, typing a kana sequence (usually the name of the symbol in Japanese), followed by a press of the spacebar, will automatically let you insert the desired symbol.
\nNote<\/i>: Apparently, most of these work equally well on Windows Japanese Input system, but I haven’t tested it.<\/p>\n
For example, any Japanese girl knows all too well how to obtain the following cutesy icons:
\n\u304a\u3093\u3077[onpu]\u3000\u2192\u3000\u266c\u2669\u266a\u266b
\n\u307b\u3057[hoshi]\u3000\u2192\u3000\u2606\u2605<\/p>\n
On a more pragmatic note, you can also choose from a very complete set of arrows:
\n\u3084\u3058\u308b\u3057[yajirushi]\u3000\u2192\u3000\u2191\u2193\u261d\u21d4 etc.<\/p>\n
And one of my personal favourite: european currency symbols that would otherwise take half an hour to find on a standard US keyboard:
\n\u3086\u30fc\u308d[yuro] \u2192\u3000\u20ac
\n\u307d\u3093\u3069[pondo] \u2192\u3000\u00a3<\/p>\n
Another very cool set for your scientific paper-writing needs:
\n\u3059\u3046\u304c\u304f[suugaku]\uff0f\u3048\u3093\u3056\u3093[enzan]\u3000\u2192\u3000\u221a\u2203\u2200\u2260\u00b1\u2207<\/p>\n
Not to mention the entire greek alphabet:
\n\u3042\u308b\u3075\u3041[arufa]\u3000\u03b1
\n\u3079\u30fc\u305f[be-ta]\u3000\u03b2
\n\u304c\u3093\u307e[ganma]\u3000\u03b3
\n\u3067\u308b\u305f[deruta]\u3000\u03b4
\n\u3057\u3050\u307e[siguma]\u3000\u03c3<\/p>\n
etc. etc.<\/p>\n