Character input apparatus, tape printing apparatus and character input method

The invention discloses a character input apparatus, a tape printing apparatus and a character input method. Object characters can be successfully input even character codes are wrongly assigned. The character input apparatus comprises a keyboard (12), character extraction parts (51, 52), peripheral character extraction parts (51, 73) and candidate display parts (51, 74). The keyboard (12) assigns the character codes. The character extraction parts (51, 52) extract the characters corresponding to the assigned character codes from a character code table (61). The peripheral character extraction parts (51, 73) extract multiple characters from the character code table (61), wherein the multiple characters are arranged on the periphery of the characters extracted from the character code table (61). The candidate display parts (51, 74) display the characters extracted by the character extraction parts (51, 73) and the multiple characters extracted by the peripheral character extraction parts (51, 73), wherein the characters serve as input candidates.