I am guessing this is similar to what utuhiro wrote in: http://www.mail-archive.com/cooker@linux-mandrake.com/msg73401.html
When I did a fresh install of RC1 + updates, OO seemed to work very well under the Japanese locale. However, after I added more fonts to the system, OO comes up completely garbled in the Japanese locale. I'd venture to guess that it chose to use some font which doesn't support Japanese so all non-English text is unreadable. Perhaps somebody can at least tell me how to change the font OO uses for its menus and dialogs so that I can change it back into something readable. A proper fix would of course be the best. Narfi ps. If this will be fixed in OOo-8mdk, then my hat's off to you!