Not That I Expected Better from Microsoft

My school wants to buy Office 2007. We are an academic institution. We are fully eligible for the academic pricing. Except there are two catches: (1) Microsoft does not allow for multilingual software--unlike Apple, which makes all of its software multilingual out of the box, and (2) they refuse to allow us to buy the English version at academic prices from within Japan. They won't sell it in Japan, and they won't let us buy it in the U.S. and bring it in to Japan. A staff member says that they have a friend at Microsoft who says that the new suite "phones home" and tells Microsoft if a U.S. academic version is being used in Japan, at least more than one copy in a single location.

As a result, we probably will wind up not buying it, as the full price is prohibitive for our budget, and, as a college (accredited both in the U.S. and in Japan!), we should not have to pay that much.

Not that I'm hot to buy Microsoft stuff, but the Computer class kinda needs that software to avoid being hopelessly out-of-date (currently we're running Office 2000). Frankly, I'd much rather we just get all Macs and, assuming the upcoming version of iWork has a spreadsheet program, we just use that and Microsoft can go screw themselves. However, the school won't go for it, as not enough students use Macs and they want to teach what the students will be using. Circular logic--everyone uses it because everyone uses it--but that's what we're stuck with.

So, if anyone knows an end run around this stupidity so we can get Academic Office 2007 like we are supposed to be able to if M$ didn't have their heads up their arses, please let me know.