When you log into the pmang site and you've to complete a Japanese captcha it can be quite difficult.
A common practice is using google translator, selecting Japanese, activating the drawing function and just doodle an approximation of what you see and hope google is with you.
I wanted to give you another option that after a short period of settling in has a higher chance of being successful I think and even has the longterm effect of providing you with more information which can be your first step towards learning Japanese.
1. basics
The written Japanese language consists of three scripts.
There are 'kanji' – characters taken from Chinese,
and the two phonetic scripts 'hiragana' and 'katakana'.
2. captcha
The characters the captcha uses are exclusively hiragana, which consists of 46 base characters. Thats it!
There are many tools online that help with identifying and typing Japanese. The following link provides you with a virtual pure hiragana keyboard.
https://www.lexilogos.com/keyboard/hiragana.htm
There you'll see all the symbols that can appear in the captcha. Good news, it's even less!
Pro-tip number 1:
Pro-tip number 2:
From there you can just select what you think is right and then copy the hiragana from the text field.
The first captchas will maybe take a few minutes but you'll very quickly remember some shapes and maybe even some pronunciations which will speed up the process more and more.