RedNotebook is a free opensource Diary and Journal software that can help you keep track of your notes, tips, tiny information you tend to forget, images etc. RedNotebook is simple and easy to use where it has a calendar navigation, customizable templates and word clouds.
Some of the prominent features include
Enter text for individual days and navigate using a calendar
Add Categories to days and fill them with content
Tag your entries
Format your text bold, italic or underlined
Insert Images, files and links to websites
Links and mail addresses are recognized automatically
Search and Automatic saving
Backup to zip archive
Word Clouds with most often used words and tags
Templates for each weekday and arbitrarily named ones
Export the journal to PDF, HTML, Latex or plain text
Graphical preferences dialog
Multiple journals
Multi-lingual support for 16 languages
Plain text files for data store and no database is needed
Click 
to automatically download the YMP file and launch YaST to install RedNotebook on your system on openSUSE 11.2 and openSUSE 11.1.
Once installed, RedNotebook should now be found under Applications – Office – Calendar.
When you launch RedNotebook, you can simply add notes, images for the current date or for any choosen data in the middle panel. You can then add Tags or categories from the right panel. You can export to HTML, PDF, Text or latex formats or backup your RedNotebook in a zip file.
Click here to visit the project home.
regards
Christian
I would suggest trying the following 3 and choosing which works best for you:
1) Ubuntu 10.04
2) Linux Mint 10.04
3) openSUSE 11.3
All 3 have switching between Japanese and English without any problems and especially without restarting. They work great out of the box and support tons of applications, drivers, etc.
(I like openSUSE the best if you want my recomend)
GL!
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/l1zard/openSUSE_11.3/noarch/
Das ist auch die offizielle Version, die in den Instructions angegeben wird.