First Bandai MG kit

Hi Dana

I have a dozen MG, HG and Gundam Seed Bandai kits, and haven't had any problems so far building them with non-english instructions.

Of the last twenty or so kits I've built, only two of them came from American companies. All the others had the instructions in Chinese or Japanese. I think you'll probably be ok.

I would be nice to be able to read some of the background stuff though...

I agree, I've always wanted to know what it says.  I translated the paint chart with my japanese dictionary, but doing the whole backstory would be impossible.  My only problem was after I translated the color chart I didn't know which brand they were using and some of the colors aren't made by Tamiya.  Thats why for my concert edition pink Zaku I just ended up doing custom colors(Including Purple because I ran out of pink paint and didn't want to spend another 2.50 on that color).