[cbracken]

In Japanese it’s called both 小型月着陸実証機 (roughly: small moon lander probe) pronounced “ko-gata tsuki chakuriku jisshōki” or スリム (SLIM). It’s not uncommon to have an English name alongside the Japanese one for some scientific projects but not always the case — e.g. I don’t recall hearing the Hayabusa probe referred to by any name other than Hayabusa (which means falcon) in the news.

[johnwalkr]

Hayabusa was also called MUSES-C. This is not only an aerospace thing, Japanese government departments and political parties usually have an english name and abbreviation. Even if it's not commonly used in daily life you will see it used for URLS.

[dotancohen]

You might be the person to ask a question that my children asked years ago. In Japan, do Japanese cars have e.g. Toyota written on them in Japanese or English? How about the model names, especially for domestic-only models? Thank you!

[xanderlewis]

To answer your example question directly: English. I don’t think Toyota would ever be written in Japanese on a car, but when talking about the company in writing it would usually be rendered in Japanese.

For model names, it’s more possible that it could be in Japanese, but even then I think it’s rare. Even outside of the realm of global industries like cars you’ll find English words and phrases being used to brand everyday local products all over the place. Japan is far more full of English writing than the Anglosphere is of Japanese…or any other language. When actually talking about these products, though, it’ll usually be written in Japanese (not least because most people in Japan aren’t confident enough in their English ability to use/remember those words and their often unpredictable spellings).

[numpad0]

Badges are often in English for cool factors, and then often katakana transcribed on documents and brochures for readability, e.g. Camry -> カムリ(kamuri). China does that inventing vaguely close Chinese names thing, e.g. Nokia -> 诺基亚(nuòjīyà, pronounced "no, ghee-yer") but that's confusing and we don't do that.

[johnwalkr]

Virtually always in english. Dealerships often have both for the company name on signs.

[jnsie]

Lovely insight. Thank you!