Comment by tmtvl
Setting up a Japanese IME in a so-called 'immutable' distro is a good way of developing a drinking problem. Tip: you really don't want ibus, you want fcitx5. No offence to the ibus developers, but ibus is garbage, fcitx is way, way better.
Thanks! I have it working in apps via fcitx5 no problem so "just" need to get it to kick in game. Getting that far was really easy though, clicking through some panels I summon with random keywords in the ... sorry I don't know what it's called and will say start menu. But the excellent indexing powering that has been really amazing.