Thanks for the attempts at solving this problem. I think it may be related to another, whereby characters aren't displayed at all in some fonts. My totally uneducated guess is that the SuSE Linux Administration Guide assumes ISO 8859-1 or similar and is now being displayed in Japanese, non-existent characters being squashed. Anyway, I read for example (near the start of "YaST in text mode (ncurses)"):
Basically, the entire program can be controlled with , + , space, the arrow keys (and ), , and shortcuts.
Ah well, I managed to do what I needed to do, even without explanations. I have a number of SuSE-related questions that, because they're M17N-irrelevant, don't belong here. Meanwhile, the ML of the local LUG greets them with stony silence. While the idea of Suse-Linux-e looks good, and questions posted there do seem to get answers, and I too am interested in the battle for World Domination, I don't want to subscribe to a ML and thereby get a bazillion messages about "Microsoft Vs. Linux Desktop Battle Heats Up" etc., etc. Clearly suse.com can't reorganize its mailing lists just for my benefit, but if there is any discussion of splitting Suse-Linux-e into practical issues on the one hand and political (etc.) ones on the other (or of converting it into a BBS), I'm all for it.