Bypassing the region check, and being "REGION FREE" are two different things, but the custom here is to apply the term REGION FREE to the act of bypassing the system's region check. You need to pass or bypass the region check before the game will start. With either 'CFW', the region check is bypassed with a forced positive result. With this 'hack', the region check will pass because AND'ing the region value of the game with the value that you changed here (game_region) results in the game's region.
Neither method does anything more than make the region check pass. Neither will prevent a game from crashing if it generates file names or makes assumptions from the console region, since the console region isn't changed by either method.
In other words, if you understand what's going on, you'll understand that there's no sense to trying this method if you've already tried Mocha or Haxchi.
By the way, the terms of your bet are not mutually exclusive and are therefore very much in the other people's favor. You would have to specify a particular game. Otherwise, the people you challenged only need to find one Japanese version game that runs on your console to win your equipment, and all you'll get out of it is two games that you'll no longer have the equipment to run on. Be smart and back down now.