I had the same issue however, this is what I did and it solved the problem.
Remove the Gen2/3 ECU from your trunk (or wherever it is on your particular model, my 02 LS430's in the trunk).
Carefully remove the faceplate and surrounding screws until you see the circuit board and disk drive.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO REMOVE THE DISK DRIVE FROM THE CHASSIS.
The key is to drain the ECU battery. You'll see it as a round upright device with yellow edging.
You can use either a small xmas tree bulb (with the wires exposed) or 1 ohm resistor. (I used the xmas light),
and tape one wire to each side of the battery. The light being lit indicates that you've got a good connection.
Don't expect it to be very bright btw but the object is to drain the battery. This could take hours so it's best to
do this before you go to bed.
If you have a volt/ohm meter, you can measure the beginning voltage (3v DC) and what it needs to be be (<2V DC).
Once the voltage is below 2v DC, it can't keep the memory and the o/s will be lost.
Put everything back together and reinstall in car. It will go through a reinstall procedure but when it's done,
you'll be back to the english version.
Note: Even though this will get you back to the default english version. it *cannot* go back to an older version of o/s.
The current version of o/s is stored somewhere else so you MUST have the same version of s/w that you were previously
using in the drive.
Note to self: I spent all last weekend fretting over this. Never, NEVER, EVER mess with those settings again!
-aki
aki, can you tell me more about the ECU in the trunk? is it the silver unit next to the dvd drive?