Problems with Adobe illustrator CS3

[Otani]

I cannot use any hot keys on my adobe illustrator CS3 on windows Vista. whenever I try to use a hot key, for example N key for the pen tool, instead it opens a little window with some asian text in it. pressing keys changes the text in the window. I can't find a way to turn it off.

I'm sure it's part of illustrator because when I open my task manager and watch the ram usage illustrators ram usage increases whenever I add characters and decreases when I delete them.

I need to turn this off because the school project I'm working on requires me to switch between two tools (pen and eye dropper) very rapidly, and not being able to use hotkeys for this makes it take WAY too long.

originally there was an icon on the system tray for it, but when I went in there to try and turn the window off all I ended up doing was turning off the system tray icon, which I can't find out how to turn back on, so now I can't get back into it's options at all.

please help?

EDIT: sorry, pencil tool not pen tool. my bad.