Does that mean i won’t face issues with not being able to read the purchased books? I’m under the assumption that currently i could only read the book with the browser or an app thats not supported internationally?
I don’t have a Japanese google play account, and I had no issue getting the app. It’s not that different from reading in the browser anyway, except that obviously in the browser you can’t be offline. I personally don’t download any manga to my phone, but I can see why people would want that.
Which app are you looking at?
This is the old ebiReader app, which is available globally, but only works for titles purchased on the old eBookJapan site, before transferring to Yahoo.
And as far as I can tell, this is the new Yahoo-compatible app, which is only available to Japanese accounts.
You have the option of manually downloading the APK if you use android, that’s what I did to get some japanese versions of games, but I don’t feel confortable doing that with a service using credit cards and such, besides I think it’s the same thing as a browser, and it doesn’t look like you can download the books, at least on PC
I have both on my phone. I am in Japan, but I use an American credit card / American play store account.
That’s weird. I don’t live in Japan, and it doesn’t even show on my Play store. When I go to the app page on the browser it shows that it’s incompatible:
I was only able to download it after creating a Japanese account. Just pretending I was in Japan with my regular account wasn’t enough.
An update: I tried signing in to my Japanese iTunes account, downloading the app, and then signing back in to my US iTunes account. So far, so good! And I think most of my manga and novels have shown up in my new account!
I read elsewhere that updates will continue to be applied even if you sign out of the Japanese iTunes account. We’ll see!
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Yeah, this is consistent with what I see, except mine says “all your devices.” (Just because I happen to have more than one Android device set up.)
The error message may just be misleading, but is it possible that it might be available with either a Japanese account or an Android device sold in Japan or something?
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It could be, but I don’t really know anything about how these region blocks work, so I can’t tell 
I’ll have to read on how to create a Japanese iTunes account, then. I’m annoyed at the thought that eventually I just won’t be able to access my previous purchases with the Ebi Reader app. 
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Just a heads up to anyone with Apple Music:
I have Apple Music and I created a Japanese iTunes account so I could download the new ebookjapan app. When you switch to the Japanese store and account, all of your songs downloaded from Apple Music (not iTunes) will be deleted from your device. I’ve only had the subscription for a couple months, so I didn’t have much to get deleted, but if you happen to have a substantial number of songs downloaded from Apple Music, you may want to consider and prepare for that ahead of time.
I confirmed from Google Support. You need to be physically present in Japan to be able to see the app in the play store. So probably they check the location somehow from your phone.
So probably @Leebo has both apps because he downloaded one when not in Japan and the other one when he was in Japan. And now both work.
Maybe using a VPN that points IP to Japan might work for downloading the app?
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Yeah, IP gating makes sense.
As another experiment, by searching Google for its package ID (jp.co.yahoo.android.ebookjapan), I came up with a number of APK mirror sites that host it. I can’t vouch for any of them necessarily, but the first one that came up (apkmonk.com) seemed to work okay.
Given the APK, my phone let me install the app, and download and view a purchase, with no problem.
I did this and it worked, but I actually had to create a new account. It didn’t show up in my regular account even with VPN on.
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I did this one and it worked for me. I am still trying to download one manga, but it is very slow.
I just wonder, what about if there is an app update, will it be updated as well or unless we check apkmonk, we would never know if there’s an update?
I’m sorry, I think I should have quoted you. 
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