If you have a PSP (Play Station Portable) in Japanese, and you want to change it to English, and you don't read Japanese and thus can't read the menus, this page is for you.

First up, here is a lovely picture of a black PSP-1000 (instructions will also work with the ceramic white version :)

On the left the cluster of four buttons are the cursors, '>'(left), '<'(right), '^'(up) and 'v'(down).
And on the right are the '△'(triangle), '◯'(circle), '×'(cross) and '□'(square) buttons.'

Here is the firmware menu. You should generally see this when you turn the unit on, or exit a game.

In general the cursor buttons are used to change possition in the menus, the '◯'(circle) selects an option, the '×'(cross) cancels or exits to the parent menu, and sometimes the '△'(triangle) shows an options menu.

When navigating the menus the selected item will pulsate as if it is a white light turning on and off.

The menu system is 2 dimentional, with the top level menu oriented horizontally, its submenus virtically, and their submenus aranged like a more conventional menu to the left of the selected item.

Use the '<'(left) cursor button to activate the Settings Menu, it is the left most item in the top-level menu, and its icon is a small suit-case. The Japanese text is 設定 (setei). You can see it in the top-left of the image above.

Use the '^'(up) and 'v'(down) cursor buttons to activate the System Settings menu, whose icon is a simplified PSP with a spanner to the top-left. The Japanese text is　本体設定 (hontai setei), and you can see it highlighted in the image above.

Use the '◯'(circle) button to select the System Settings menu. This will cause a sub menu to pop up. Each item as a spanner in a circle as its icon. The first item is the nickname of your PSP, set that to whatever you want. The second item is the System Language menu. Use the '^'(up) and 'v'(down) cursor buttons to activate this menu item. The Japanese text is 表示言語 (hyoji gengo).

Use the '◯'(circle) button to select System Language menu and it should pop up a further menu to the extreem right of the display, listing all the available languages, with the current one, Japanese selected. Japanese is written as 日本語 (nihongo).

The image above shows the display after the System Settings and in turn the System Language menus have been slected.

Use the '^'(up) and 'v'(down) cursor buttons to activate English, which is towards the top of the list, and initially not visible as Japanese is torwards the bottom of the list which is too long to be completely displayed.

Use the '◯'(circle) button to select English. The language list sub-menu will disapear, and all menu items (except perhaps those in the language list) will now be in English.

You can now use the cursor keys to navigate the top and second level menus, and the '◯'(circle) and '×'(cross) buttons to select and dismiss menu items, just as before, but now its in English.

For extra fun, repeat the above steps for all the different languages available.