Kentaro Go, Hayato Konishi, and Yoshisuke Matsuura. 2008. Itone: a japanese text input method for a dual joystick game controller. In CHI '08 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (CHI EA '08). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3141-3146. DOI=10.1145/1358628.1358821 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1358628.1358821 

Abstract: In this paper, we report the design and evaluation of a Japanese text input method called IToNe. It uses a dual joystick game controller to input Japanese text. The left and right joysticks are respectively assigned to the left and right halves of the Japanese syllabary chart. The combination of left and right joystick signals selects a character. IToNe is theoretically faster than the Japanese selection chart. Results of a preliminary user study show that users prefer IToNe to EGCONVERT: its smoothness during operation and accuracy measures are significantly higher. In addition, the learning curve of IToNe suggests that it can be learned easily and that it potentially provides higher performance.