These instructions show you how to setup an alternative locale environment and run the platform in it. They apply to other tools besides the platform as well, of course. In fact, these instructions are more pertinent to platform tools since the platform itself is somewhat isolated from locale changes on the host machine.

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1. Set the preferred language:
   Edit->Preferences->Content->Languages
2. Set the preferred encoding:
   View->Character Encoding->Japanese (Shift_JIS)

6. Running Java Swing apps in Japanese

Swing apps will not render East-asian or other non-latin character sets correctly unless you have setup the correct fonts in your JRE. Instead of having to modify font.properties files, you can use this simple workaround:

1. cd to your jre/lib/fonts folder
2. create a dir named "fallback" and cd into it (the JRE will look here before determining it cannot find a font)
3. locate the system fonts you wish the JRE to know about. In Ubuntu 9.04 that location is /usr/share/fonts/truetype.
4. create symlinks to those fonts in the fallback folder. For example ln -s /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-japanese-mincho.ttf

References

http://www.linux.com/feature/53781
http://jody.sci.hokudai.ac.jp/~ike/colum/ubuntu_feisty_amd64.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift-JIS