Japanese is kind of similar. Although usually native speakers do not use an English keyboard. They use this:

Image

Since Japanese has 5 vowels, each key here represents a consonant and can actually enter any of the 5 vowels by either tapping on it or flicking up, down, left or right on it. Once you’ve built the word you’re trying to write, you can tap on the auto suggested kanji or katakana or leave it as is in hiragana.

The exception is the bottom left and right keys which are for alternative consonants (I’m not sure the actual linguistic term) and punctuation which have fewer options but work similarly.

So if I’m writing the character for home, I’d flick the button toy he right of the emoji button left for い and then right for え. Once I have both hiragana characters, I just need to tap on the 家 character that appears above the keyboard.