About ten years ago I bought a $30 pgm from cyrillic.com that allows me to put russian letters anywhere I want on the keyboard, and it comes with a "student set" or smth like that, which puts
qwertyuiop
яшертыуиоп

you get the idea. I even bought the WinXP update. I am using it right now. Hit a key combination (I can choose which one) and I can switch back and forth between кириллица and roman. I can type in Russian as fast as I can type in English with this setup.

I did that because I never did want to have to memorize the itsuken keyboard (or whatever it is.). Why waste my time learning a new layout?