I toyed with an idea to get a (normal) Wii for my parents earlier this year but didn’t end up pulling the trigger. But in a strange turn of events, a friend of mine gave me his Japanese Wii (he upgraded to an ‘English’ Wii for his kids) for free, which in turn has become my parents’ xmas present just today.
Now, does anyone have any experience with a Japanese Wii? Is it possible now using modchips or changer apps or homebrews or whatever to ‘unlock’ the wii, change the region settings up so either you can play English games, or you could change up the language options, or watch a DVD of any region on it or something, or some kind of modification to make better use of the console (and make it easier to use in general). I’m still not entirely sure what’s acceptable to use or not on this console! And basically, for me, the biggest thing is whether it’s possible to use English language games - or if Japanese games will have a language option so I could switch the game to English on a game to game basis - on it (if the basic menu stays Japanese, I can deal with that), and whether I can use it as a dvd player without trouble. I know enough rudimentary Japanese to kind of know/guess what’s going on, but I can’t imagine doing the same for say a game Zelda and having to translate the story at every turn.
If the Japanese Wii is unchangeable, then I guess all right, but if it is possible to modify the console in a moderately complicated way, I would like to do that (because I’d prefer modifying it now so I could buy English language games for it, if that is possible). Are there particular online guides on the matter that you’d recommend me to read up on the matter? As you can probably tell by now, I know very little about Wii region settings and whatnots - seems rather strange for a console these days to have such separate games for consoles blocked by language and region.
Thanks for all the help, and may everyone get a surprise freebie this xmas. Happy holidays! 
