Agreed. Furthermore, even if such a thing were possible, the size of the Japanese population in Southern California is not enough to make this a high-yield skill set. I'm not sure where you might have gotten the idea that this is a major ethnic/cultural/linguistic group in SoCal. They are far outnumbered by speakers of Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese.
In any case, there is so much diversity out there, not one of us can possibly hope to master it all. I believe the best approach is to cultivate a general skill-set and attitude of cultural openness, which can be translated across encounters with individuals of all backgrounds. Oh, and know how to really use an interpreter well. (And to be clear, when I referred to a very diverse patient population at LAC+USC, I wasn't just referring to language...)
Anyway, if you are a fluent Spanish speaker (esp if you are a native speaker) that is the most valuable linguistic/cultural skill set you can have in SoCal. I am the only psychiatry resident in my year who has the skills to do psychiatry in Spanish...so as you can imagine, my caseload is overflowing, because the need is so great...
