Playing pokemon outside the pokemon center

At the Pokemon center in Hakata, my friends experienced what happens when you decide to play pokemon right outside the store. A man who was probably 30+ who spoke no english came up to my friends asking to trade. All we could say was, we hope we don't end up like that when we are older. He was holding 2 DS's and had quite a few pokemon games with him for various trading purposes. Seriously, lets not become that. xD Anyway it was quite interesting trying to recognize which pokemon he wanted, since he obviously only knew the Japanese names.
How to figure out which Japanese pokemon you are talking about:
1. Type (like grass, water, etc)
2. color
3. shape
4. Pokedex
5. Show them the screen and hope that was the pokemon they were talking about
Anyway, that experience was entertaining and props to the guy to have the guts to break through a language barrier for trading pokemon.