>>36995508The majorly Japanese names were used to ease the transition. Reminder Japanese got mad at SMT Strange Journey for not taking place in Japan. By the time Kalos rolleed they dropped most of the Japan references (and Japanese are Frenchaboos anyways). Hawaii conveniently is very multicultural and has many Japanese citizens and the food is a mix of Hawaii-Japanese (modern poke, spam musubi). The next region will likely be yet another country popular with Japanese tourists or with a high Japanese population.
Also, Unova is based in New York, but they wanted to represent how multicultural New York is so they put a ton of stuff from different cultures and people of different etnicies and made towns with varied architecture, more noticeable in village bridge that is distinctively Italian but it's BGM is Enka.
BW interviews with Sugimori and Masuda are still online and probably go more indept that I can remember.
