Trust me, with the "way" Mass Effect is (very similar in gameplay to......Phantasy Star Universe), it will definately come out in Japan.
However, I have absolutely no idea when. Most likely, it wasn't planned from the beginning (unlike Halo 3, or Gears of War, which were both released rather quickly in both cases).
According to www.gamefaqs.com Bioshock is coming out in Febuary next year. That means that there was "about" a 6 month delay for translation.
Because of that, I would expect 6 months. EA has been known to port over a good bit of their franchises, regardless of sales. So in a way, the EA aquisition should help out in this case.
I would "think" that ME was/has been translated into various non-English languages. However, the localization process for Japan is vastly, vastly, different (and vice versa). The translation costs are a bit steeper, since Japanese isn't a language that can be easily translated (ie, the text interfaces. Atleast in French, or any European language, you still use the similar english character sets).
A good game to look at, would be Oblivion. It took Bethsada.....What? 1 year and 2 months? I'm not saying that any other Western game will take that long, but it is a good note.
Basically, because Oblivion has litterally paved the way for Western games in Japan that aren't MS-driven. No game before that did very well (sans Gears and Halo), and Oblivion just randomly does ~125k on the X360/PS3, despite being a hardcore Western RPG.
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After a bit of Googling, I turned up the following Kotaku article:
http://kotaku.com/gaming/lingo/mass-effect-bioshock-turning-japanese-267398.php
Appearently, the Japanese gamers made a petition to bring Oblivion to Japan. The same petition is now going around for Bioshock (with a 2/28/08 release date). So I would expect Mass Effect in Japan around March or April.
Honestly? I think Mass Effect will do great there. It was one of my "big 3" to watch out for in Japan (Western games getting some sales in the East). I think 100k sales is definately plausible, since the Japanese love a good Sci-Fi game.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
