For non-Japanese Asian. Do you have to know japanese to play?

[tiachopvutru]

non-gravity said:
Former Soviet Republics are better off with a Russian version (or English) as they're not even related to Japan.
the Middle East are better off with a Turkish or Islamic (or English) version as they're still not related to Japan.
Southern Asia has former British colonies and speak English.
What's left of Asia Japan conquered in WWII and the might not like Japan and they're languages look in no way like Japan (only that they're strange signs us Westerns will not understand.
For the Sushi eating crowd, go live in Japan!

Actually, a portion of the Japanese writing systems (Kanji) is borrowed from the Chinese, so their writing do look similar.

However, due to the usage of hiragana as well (a different writing system; they mix these different scripts, btw), different sentence structure and grammar, and simply language difference, a Chinese would struggle to understand a Japanese sentence. On the other hand, a Chinese should be able to learn Japanese faster than other non-Japanese since learning Kanji alone takes time.