Alot of japanese games can be played with trial and error... most of them will feature some amount of english characters in order to get you started, and you can memorize the positions of relevant information...
although you might not be able to get as much out of it as you'd like, with more complex specials and other abilities been inaccessible due to lack of language...
and of course there's the lack of understanding story.
Wish those games would come out in english... or at least get patched by fans... somehow.