Shadowrun: Hong Kong takes place mostly in an area that's very clearly "what if they had basically rebuilt Kowloon?"

Reading Japanese is still a useful skill! Even with my weekly tutoring, my reading is still better than my speaking but that lets me play games in Japanese and follow Japanese twitter accounts, which I wouldn't otherwise be able to do. Plus reading signs, like you say--when my father was in Kyoto visiting me he mentioned that at least in Europe he could look at the signs and get a general idea if he were going the right direction but in Japan he had no idea.