Johnny,
Sweet! Putting the settings in ~/.bash_profile as you suggest has made it work perfectly! Thank you! You'll notice from my use of exclamation points that I'm really psyched about this. I've been wanting Japanese support for weeks, and now I finally have it the way I want.
I think it might be ideal to have this setting for "all users", but as I'm currently the only user of this machine, that's really an academic point. But still, I'm curious to know if it's possible. You suggest putting the settings in a file called /etc/profile.d, but then you also say that might not be the best solution. Is there a reason you think there might be some dangers there, or is that just being open to the idea that there might be more elegant solutions?
Also, I notice I don't have a Sessions application anwywhere on my menu. Of course I first searched where you said it would be, and then I looked in other areas, and can't find it. Is this a deficiency of my set up, or do I have to specify to have it available?
Dave