with the freedom ecu, the reason its coming up with wierd symbols is because you PC doesn't have the language package for japanese loaded up. so basically if anyone has ever installed an operating system ie, xp or 7, they will know that there is a menu during the install process which allows you to choose which languages you want to support, if you install the japanese package you get actual japanese characters (kanji?, anyway the caligraphy shit lol) instead of meaningless symbols.
So This means its not a fault with the ecu, but it does mean the ecu is still writing in japanese. You can use online translators but you need a translator to understand the translations usually