If you have Windows 7, go to "Control Panel", then "Clock, Language and Region", later "Regional and language configuration"; "Administrative" and then click on the button "Change regional configuration of the system" that it's below the title "No unicode programs language" and then, select "Japanese". Later, restart computer, and play the game.
Note: Maybe the options have a little different name, I'm from Argentina and running a Windows 7 spanish version, so I made the translation how i suppose it is on the English version of Windows.
Note 2: In order to use Meditate and prevent the crash, you will have to play the game completely on japanese. If you use the program "AppLocale" will usually crash (Same happen to me when I use Meditate or when i get defeated by the monsters). And you got to play from the beginning (I mean, if you were running the game with an english patch and later you wan't to play it on japanese using a saved game that you made with the english patch, it will crash).
The good thing of play the game in japanese, is that there's no crash (Well only one i think when you use Demon Decapitation) and you can save the game in any place you want. Bad thing of course is that you need to guess by try and error how to advance on story.