Just got the game from gamestop as well as got the rom. I haven't messed with the real game just yet, but I did toy around with the rom and saw that I was able to still use the save from when I played the japanese version with your patch ^______^. Many great thanks for allowing me and many others to play this game 8 months before the US release with little to no language barrier problems.
For all those interested: I haven't looked into the rom's file structure yet, but I would assume that if the saves work the same for both regions then the voice files are prob do too and all that would be needed to make an english w/ jpn voice rom would be to replace the english voice files with the original japanese voice files.