This will be the first game I've ever imported. It will take a portion of my paycheck. It will render me unable to pay my car insurance on time- WIN.
 
Getting to the point: I'll  be buying this from Play-Asia. I'm a bit worried because I have very little knowledge of the japanese language. I won't be able to read anything. I understand there are guides and such online, but what piques my curiosity is rumblings of english patches. How would those work? Would I have to have the game on a certain totally illegal device? Does anyone out there that owns this game have any advice to give me?

This will be the first game I've ever imported. It will take a portion of my paycheck. It will render me unable to pay my car insurance on time- WIN.
 
Getting to the point: I'll  be buying this from Play-Asia. I'm a bit worried because I have very little knowledge of the japanese language. I won't be able to read anything. I understand there are guides and such online, but what piques my curiosity is rumblings of english patches. How would those work? Would I have to have the game on a certain totally illegal device? Does anyone out there that owns this game have any advice to give me?

Yeah, you'd need a  flash cart or something like that to play with an English patch.

The english patch is very good, but it only works with flash cards. Otherwise it can be very hard to navigate some of the menus in Japanese, I particularly remember the tutorial being a bitch to do when you have no idea what you're supposed to do. Also there are a ton of manga in the game which I'm pretty sure have never been released outside of Japan, so you have to play through some of those before you get your Narutos and One Pieces. There are some good guides hanging around somewhere on the interwebs, start there would be my advice.

" Ummm.... why did you have it imported?  This game is frequently on the shelves of toy's r us and best buy.  I'm not kidding I've seen it a few times in the states in traditional stores.  It's also at several  gamestop's in my area atleast which you can go to gamestop and search on the website to see if the stores in your area have it in stock I believe Walmart and Bestbuy have a similar feature.  Gamestop calls it  a game locator.   You should really get a flashcard to download games on mine was like $15bucks.  Putting the games on are as easy as putting music on your cellphone. "