The joke is more on if foreigners assume that there’s subtitles in real life when they hear spoken Japanese. Basically, the meme is on the language barrier (for those who know zero Japanese).

There is region locking for the Switch 2 (mainly a separate console variant) as its sold cheaper than the international counterparts, it’s priced at ¥59,980 ($382) while the one from the US is $500 before tax. The reason why they had to region lock the system is the weak Yen, they don’t want foreigners to export them.

The only thing that’s region locked is language: the immediate boot up begins with the EULA in Japanese, leaving no option to change region since its fixed to Japan only or revert to English. You can only sign in using a Japanese Nintendo account and use their eShop, foreign games will work but translate into Japanese.