I've been struggling with getting the Input Method to work for Japanese on my Ubuntu installation (Gnome). I finally found this little, seemingly insignificant addition to the process: Well, I had this kind of problem recently when I installed Ubuntu 9.04. SCIM was showing on tray but was not triggering after pressing the shortcuts. I have solved this problem at last. If you have similar type of problem too, go to System > Administration > Language Support and check the option "Use the input method engines (IME) to enter complex characters". Then restart you x-org server by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Backspace. So, after installing Japanese support and adding Anthy as one of the inputs in SCIM, I finally have the ability to type in Japanese again! One problem I'm still working on - the hotkeys are somewhat tricky and don't match the old standby IME from MS. MS is a lot of bad things, but I'm used to their IME and I'd like to at least get my hotkeys to...