Regional settings - setting secondary language input

[dystopialives]

I was wanting to type japanese via romanji, i went to regional settings as suggested by a friend and set it to switch when I hit "Left Alt + Shift" When I hit this, it does nothing...so i went in and set "switch to japanese when I pres Left Alt + Shift +0" and it still doesn't go. I know i have all necessary japanese fonts etc...

I should technically be able to hit that combo and type romanji ex : "watashi wa robert" and it should translate into katakana/hiragana right?

I'm on xp home media center edition.

Any input is much appreciated. Thanks in advance.