> A verb (or verbal adjective) basically forms the "root" of a clause, and typically appears at the end of it.

> Compared with a typical programming language, Japanese is structured the opposite way - from right to left.

How consistent is that across different types of phrases?

English is generally described as being strongly right-headed. But that's really a statement about English noun phrases. Prepositional phrases are left-headed. Determiner phrases, if that's your thing, are left-headed. Verbs are normally positioned between their subject and object, with other modifiers generally after the object.

I had a Chinese tutor who complained that everything in Chinese was the other way around compared to English, but as far as I can tell the odds are about 50-50 that any given structure will match or reverse. Mandarin sentences are SVO just like English. Mandarin prepositions go after their nouns instead of before. Mandarin adjectives go before their nouns. Mandarin noun compounds work the same way as English noun compounds. (牙刷 "tooth brush" is a brush, not a tooth.) Mandarin verbs have indirect objects before the verb instead of after. Mandarin discourse particles occur at the end of the sentence instead of the beginning.† Mandarin relative clauses work just like English noun phrases, which is funny because English relative clauses have their own bespoke ordering. (English: the man who has five sisters; Mandarin: has five sisters who [the] man.)

The big lesson I drew from this is "it doesn't make a lot of sense to describe languages overall as having a particular orientation". Is Japanese more consistent, or is orientation more sensitive to the specific structures you're using?

† Note that "beginning" and "end" aren't the only options. In classical Latin and Greek, particles like this always appear as the second word in a sentence.