The bottom left white button and the yellow band of the first picture are the same thing I think. My guess is the yellow band is the abbreviation of the white button. So that’s why you don’t see any okurigana (hiragana suffixes after the kanji) for the yellow band.
資財積降 = 資財積み降ろし　=　しざいつみおろし　= Unloading (and possibly loading) something (materials, assets, cargo?, not clear what you’re unloading).
積む（つむ） = to load
The other two buttons are “OK”(I think…not sure why they wouldn’t just use the romaji for OK there) and “Cancel”.
Keep in mind that I’m not an native speaker so please double check with one if you have the opportunity to do so.

Cool thanks!

How are you typing the japanese text?
I mean from looking at the text in the image, how do you type it (what do you use) and with so many possible symbols, how do you type it (with only so many keys on the keyboard)?

Is it related to strokes? (sorry, i'm fairly new to japanese)

If you're using Windows (which I am) you just have to configure the operating system to make the option of Japanese input available to you. Here's a website that gives you detailed instructions on how to do this:
How to enable Japanese display and typing ability in Windows XP - Bemanistyle [dot] com Forums

Once you've got it setup, there will be some little icons in your task tray that you can use to change the language of your keyboard. Just click on the icon for Japanese input then you can type out hiragana characters by just sounding them out in romaji. For example, if I've got Japanese language input selected, then if I type the letters "ka" it makes the hiragana character か. If I type out an actual japanese work like "uchi" at first it makes the hiragana うち. After typing that word, if I hit the space bar (actually I have to hit it twice), it will give me a list of kanji characters that have the same sound as "uchi". In this case it could be 家 or 内 or 中 or a few others because that sound is common to quite a few different words. So you use your arrow keys to select the appropriate kanji from the list to match your intended meaning. It took me a while to get used to typing in Japanese when I first started studying but I've since gotten the hang of it.

No stroke count needed. Of course if you're trying to read something and have no idea how to pronounce the kanji, you can look it up with an online dictionary where the kanji can be found by stroke count or radicals (the kanji's component parts). Multiradical lookup is my prefered method for finding the readings of unfamiliar kanji:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/c...wwwjdic.cgi?1R

Another handy tool for when you're learning to read Japanese online is the Rikaichan plugin for the Firefox browser. When you enable Rikaichan, you can hover your mouse pointer over Japanese words and it'll return the reading in hiragana as well as the definition in English (or some other supported language). Rikaichan is my life-saver since I can only read a little more than a thousand kanji at the moment. It helps fill in the blanks for me.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2471

Good luck with your studies.

I've downloaded the addon, it seems good so far, although I think typing is too advanced for me at this stage...

For future career prospects, would you say its better to learn Japanese or Mandarin Chinese?

There does seem to be some significant overlap with their written forms. Should I start with the written? Although it also seems in order to understand the written, one must know how to vocalize the sounds (pinyin?) so maybe spoken is better to start with?

That all depends on where you're planning to move to...Japan or China? Where I lived in the USA, there was no need for either of the languages in my line of work. Of course moving to one of those countries changes all that.

If you're going to learn a foreign language anyways, there's nothing compelling you to stop at just one. Spend a couple years, learn one, then spend a couple years and learn the other. If you have the opportunity, I strongly encourage studying actually in your target country if at all possible. Your language ability will improve by leaps and bounds from the immersion and being forced to use it everyday.

No matter which language you choose to tackle, I suggest learning the written forms (especially kanji) as early on as possible. There's a kind of feedback loop that happens when you learn kanji. Your vocabulary starts to grow from learning kanji. And in turn, as your vocabulary grows it becomes easier to learn and remember new kanji you see in kanji compound words if you already know one of the characters. Kanji knowledge and vocabulary reinforce each other so it'll be better in the long run to start learning them as soon as possible.

Most people would say Mandarin. China is poised to become the #1 country in the world economically. Japan is not.

I think you're right Kyle, although with Japan being so close, i'm sure some success will rub of on Japan.

I will learn Mandarin. New years resolution :)
Thanks for the help all.
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Doesn't really matter. I've never met anyone who was successful learning either for the sake of making money. Only those that love the country and its culture find anything close to fluency.

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