Linux
Linux users can more than likely find MeCab in their distro repositories. Simply install 'mecab' and the package 'mecab-ipadic-utf8'. Ubuntu users can do this with the following command.
sudo apt-get install mecab mecab-ipadic-utf8
If that doesn't work, you can download the source and build it yourself. Note that this will require the package 'build-essential'.
First pull in MeCab.
wget https://mecab.googlecode.com/files/mecab-0.996.tar.gz
tar zxfv mecab-0.996.tar.gz
cd mecab-0.996`
./configure --with-charset=utf8 --enable-utf8-only
make && make install
Then get the dictionary file.
wget https://mecab.googlecode.com/files/mecab-ipadic-2.7.0-20070801.tar.gz`
`tar zxfv mecab-ipadic-2.7.0-20070801.tar.gz`
`cd mecab-ipadic-2.7.0-20070801`
`./configure --with-charset=utf8
make && make install
Mac OS X
Both MeCab and the required dictionary (mecab-ipadic-utf8) are in MacPorts. If that doesn't work, try downloading the source and building it yourself. You can get the source and the dictionary from the following urls:
https://mecab.googlecode.com/files/mecab-0.996.tar.gz
https://mecab.googlecode.com/files/mecab-ipadic-2.7.0-20070801.tar.gz
Windows
Download the installer from this url: https://mecab.googlecode.com/files/mecab-0.996.exe
Once you get mecab to start, type some Japanese and make sure you get an appropriate response.
~$ mecab
`やった`
``やっ 動詞,自立,*,*,五段・ラ行,連用タ接続,やる,ヤッ,ヤッ`
`た 助動詞,*,*,*,特殊・タ,基本形,た,タ,タ`
`！ 記号,一般,*,*,*,*,！,！,！
`EOS`