I’ve tried to get よつばと！ and しろくまカフェ but both were not available on Book Walker (https://bookwalker.jp/) (Yotsuba-to English version was available for some reason). Has anyone had success finding beginner friendly reading material on this platform and if so would love if you could share some titles.
Also, if not Book Walker, what other electronic platforms have you guys found to buy manga to be able to read on a tablet etc?
Amazon Kindle and ebookJapan also have manga. Not that there is よつばと！ or しろくまカフェ, though.
Buying Digital Japanese Books by Sirvorn
魁!!クロマティ高校 seems to have full furigana, but it isn’t necessarily that easy to read.
The lack of Yotsubato! on Bookwalker has always been a bit odd, considering it’s published by ASCII Media Works, who is owned by Kadokawa, who owns Bookwalker. Even other Comic Dengeki Daiou titles (like Yagate Kimi ni Naru or Shinmai Shimai no Futari Gohan) are on Bookwalker. Could be some kind of rights issue with the author.
As for titles with furigana, I’m reading through Flying Witch at the moment (on vol 5) and it has full furigana. If you’ve seen the anime you know it’s a wonderful story, but if not, it’s a slice of life series set in modern day rural Japan about a girl named Makoto who moves in with some non-witch relatives as she trains to be a witch. Her little cousin Chinatsu is one of the most most charming and adorable kids ever too.
I use bookwalker and amazon kindle, except I’ve moved over mostly to bookwalker because I have a gigantic amazon US kindle account and you can’t really swap between the JP and the US account that easily on any device.** I do miss the great JP-EN dictionary that Kindle has, though. My suggestion for beginner reading is Kiki’s Delivery Service here: 魔女の宅急便(文芸・小説)の電子書籍無料試し読みならBOOK☆WALKER Just add to cart like you would with the US Bookwalker account and check out - you can buy off your US bookwalker account so the checkout process is the same. BTW, bookwalker has tons of great sales all the time so you might want to wait until they have those 100 yen sales, or win one of the 5000 and 10000 yen monthly giveaways that the US bookwalker does (I won 10000 yen once), since they work for both the US and JP store.
**This is not strictly true - you can buy ebooks off other Amazon country accounts in a single account (think JP is included but not 100% sure - I know you can with UK Amazon) with a separate mailing address within each country but if you have an Amazon Prime account, they’ll kick you out of prime every time you change out countries. If you don’t have one or aren’t part of a Prime family account, go wild! Set up separate addresses.
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