I'm considering jumping to linux, but before I even consider it there's a couple things I need to know that have been hard to dig up in FAQs.

In need
1. to be able to input japanese with some kind of decent IME 2. to be able to set my keyboard up as Dvorak and most importantly 3. To be able to input japanese WITH a dvorak layout. This took a registry edit to setup in windows, and I haven't heard anything about doing it in linux. I'm asking here only because my prof reccommended Ubuntu as a good first linux distro. I'm not sure if it's a general linux question or an Ubuntu question.

Japanese is no problem at all. Just make sure you're running a UTF-8 environment, and install scim (or uim) and one or more supported IMEs such as Anthy.

I've never tried a Dvorak keyboard, but I don't think you'll have any problem there either. You just need to select the proper keyboard layout for your xorg configuration, and/or the desktop environment you're using. It shouldn't affect the IME in any way.

See also Multi-lingualText on Linux