I think part of it is that, as a Japanese person who live through the 80s, he remembers a lot of derogatory anti-Japanese rhetoric coming from the US at that time. Adding a “Japanese” identifier may have felt like that kind of discrimination coming back again.

It’s not just best song or soundtrack. It’s for environment and interactive sound components, too.

Nintendo has a blog post that goes deep into the battle system:

Wow, a little bigger.

(wow, I'm late on this)
It depends on what people mean by grinding.

I ignored most of the side quests in XC and completed it without much grinding (save one notorious boss battle that really jumped in difficulty. I did grind a little for that.)