Japanese Keyboard Nuvi 270

You need to find the installation firmware for the Japanese market. You can try the Garmin Japan website and to see if there is any updates for that model. Always backup your unit before even attempt for it. However, your best bet will be someone has a japanese model and gives you a copy of his unit software because most of the time the firmware update does not contain the full unit software.

Thanks for your comments. The 270 is not available in Japan but the 250 is, and the firmware is available to download for that model. I don't have access to another 250 to copy the data off the flash memory. If I went ahead and (downgraded) the firmware from version 5 to version 4.2J I might have a brick especially if there are significant differences between the software required for the 250. So unless anyone else has tried this...
CC01

I'm surprised that the 270 supports language and text but does not have a keyboard.

It isn't one of the selections at the bottom of the keyboard list, is it?

tools>settings>language>keyboard

My understanding is that 270 and 250 are the same unit except that 270 comes with both NA and Europe maps as 250 only has NA map. However, I do not know for sure it will work.

Probably the Garmin Asian bilingual version mainly for the North American market.

Keyboard is absolutely not present. Yes, it is a little strange that the 270 has support for display, voice but not input. And it is not just Japanese but Chinese, Korean, Thai and other Asian languages that are just missing the respective language keyboard. If I want to go somewhere I have to pan the map to the location and set it manually, English input is invalid in a search. To be honest I am surprised that this much is supported, but it is curious that its the keyboard that is missing. I have a hunch that it is a issue that can only be addressed by firmware, but I would like to be wrong...

Well, I saw a different comment on this forum about creating an English QWERTY keyboard by editing the GTT file. I edited the Japanese GTT file with a Japanese language XML editor and was able to create full Hiragana and Katakana keyboards using uppercase/lowercase switch to accommodate the extra characters. I can now enter Japanese text for favorites description etc. However the search function is performed with Kanji, and there seems to be no ability to convert Hiragana/Katakana strings to Kanji directly on this unit, so the keyboard was not much use in searches. I created yet another keyboard with the first Kanji character of Japan the country, and of the Japanese prefectures names. This worked ok, since all subsequent steps in a search can be performed by leaving the city etc. blank and just scrolling through the options offered. However, there is a serious problem in searching and that lies in the difference between how Japan and other countries structure an address. Japan does not use street names and numbers but a Banchi system of blocks divided into lots. There is no way this problem can be overcome due to the fundamental difference in the structure of the addressing system, so even if I had a perfect Kanji keyboard I would still be stumped. Anyway, unless someone else has any ideas I think I have taken the 270 as far as it can be with the limitations of Japanese addressing. Here are the gtt files and screenshots in case anybody wants them.

http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/2445371_sjpkt/Japanese.gtt
Contains Kanji keyboard of first character of all Japanese prefectures and the first Kanji character of Japan.

http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/2445372_etn7h/Hiragana.gtt
Contains Hiragana keyboard

http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/2445373_b31sr/Katakana.gtt
Contains Katakana keyboard

Images

http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/2445424_o7oso/Hiragana1.JP...
http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/2445423_yhm5i/Prefectures....
http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/2445422_tvvov/Katakana2.JP...
http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/2445421_hchnd/Katakana1.JP...
http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/2445420_e4rdv/Hiragana2.JP...