Japan Wants Your American Pokemans

Is it a seller's market for Pokemans? If you're one of the first batch of American players, you could luck out and get some rare monsters for little work thanks to the five million people who have the Japanese game. Japanese players, who've been Pokemanning up since September, are apparently willing to trade virtually anything for even the weakest English-language creatures.

Japanese players can't enter English characters for their Pokemon names. (And American players can't enter Japanese text.) English words are "cool" for some reason in Japan and since they need American players to trade their Pokemon to get ones with English names, they will make excellent deals (for Americans) to get English-named Pokemon.
I believe the game has also sold around 6 million copies in Japan and probably about a million in the US so far, so, theoretically, the demand far outstrips the supply at this point, making sellers market.

Is this really what's going on? It seems like the most compelling explanation; having an English name on a Pokemon is probably more than enough reason for Japanese players, who likely have a surplus of "rare" Pokemans to trade, to try and snap them up. It's truly a global village. Now excuse me while I trade this Magikarp for a level 99 Palkia.

A weird cultural anomaly in global Pokemon trading [Quarter to Three, via Joystiq]