while i like my blackberry (i have a curve currently, through my work), it seems their language support for anything kanji based is atrocious.  i have not been able to get any sort of japanese language support working on my verizon blackberry.  i AM running a non-standard OS release, much newer than the one verizon offers, but alas, still not japanese support.  if i can find a 83xx version from a japanese provider maybe i could hack it together.  but then the whole OS has been changed around for the touchscreen storm.  so that might not help you anyway.  you could always get a cheap older version of the iPod Touch, and make use of all the awesome japanese stuff that offers?

In case anyone cares, I want to my local Verizon store today to look at the new Storm.  I asked the guy about Japanese language, and he didn't know (I don't think that question gets asked too often here in Texas), so I just grabbed the demo and drove it to this website.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that it worked just fine (I had borrowed a friend's Blackberry Pearl yesterday, only to find that it couldn't).  I was able to read the Japanese Only thread on this forum without out a problem (well *I* couldn't...need to study a bit more for that, but the Blackberry could), although I did have to zoom in one level further to make some of the characters legible compared to what I considered legible English text.    I don't know about an IME, but I don't care about that so much as long as I can view text.

All in all, I was impressed with the device, so I bought one.  Unfortunately the store was sold out and I am getting it shipped in the next couple of days, but oh well.