Hello,
I’ve been trying to get Japanese ebooks, but am coming across issues of not having a Japanese VPN. I don’t really want to pay for one - is there a way to get around this? I don’t just want PDFs, since I want to be able to look up words on my ipad. Thanks for your help!
If you’re okay with using VPN’s for that, there’s plenty of ways to avoid having to pay for one. Free Trials, Free providers, Tor, …
Bookwalker doesn’t require a VPN. You just have to register on a Japanese only site initially.
Here’s a guide for Amazon JP
https://community.wanikani.com/t/buying-digital-japanese-books/10603/151
I’m pretty sure you’d still need to get a VPN for that 
Nope. I’ve done it without one. You will need to get a tenso account for a physical Japanese address but that’s in that walk-through.
I bought some eBooks a few weeks back and had to use a VPN travel to Japan. Just checked to be sure, I have all my settings exactly like it’s described in the link. Also using tenso.
It’s been a few months since I bought anything and I only got a few things so they could have changed it. 
I think I remember seeing some posts about Amazon JP catching on that you’re not in Japan and stopping you from buying anything…
If anyone does give it a try can you report back if it still works or not?
Any particular reason why this happens? Licensing?
Yeah, most likely.
You could try SoftEther. Just connect to a Japanese IP, buy something once, and then you’re usually good for a couple months. I haven’t had issues for my last ~70 purchases.
Digital distribution tends to be region specific. I think it’s like a legal thing to make sure publishers don’t come in conflict with each other on accident.
I needed to buy a few things on the VPN, but I was just able to make a purchase without the VPN last week.
I used my friend’s address in Japan, and it didn’t work for me. I did use my own initially, though, so maybe once you do that you can’t back track?
Did you try buying Kindle ebooks on amazon.co.jp but changing your region in your account settings to Japan before doing so?
It works fine for me bit I‘m in Japan every once in a while, not sure if that makes a difference. Changing your region is essential though.
DANG IT! 
Because of you all I now have another Japanese book that I can’t read yet!!
I just now bought an ebook from amazon jp without VPN and I live in the US.
Right now the language is english, and region is japan. Is that what you mean?
When I go to kindle books it says “Not currently available”
I was even just in Japan, and couldn’t buy books on my account when I was there. I wonder if it’s because the first address I put in was a US address. I since deleted that from my account so that the only address is Japanese.
Also tried it just now and it works. I’m guessing it’s as Rainous said (Atleast for me)
hmm. Maybe I’ll start over and get a new account. I don’t understand why it’s not letting me buy books.
I meant the region in “Manage Your Content and Devices” > Country/Region Settings. This has to be set to Japan, otherwise it won’t work in my experience. I’ve once suggested this to another poster on this forum and it fixed their issue.
But as the others said, I can’t rule out completely that you don’t need to be in Japan (virtually or for real) every once in a while for this to keep working.
And once you have the Kindle books, the first thing I usually do is extract them to text using Calibre (you need an old version of the Kindle Cloud reader installed, won’t work with newer versions). Then I paste this text in japanese.io (my favorite way of reading at the moment) or use an iOS app called Wakaru to read the content. I’m quite disappointed with the Kindle built in dictionary lookup.
Thanks so much!! I didn’t realize it and I changed my country and now it says I can buy books! I’ll test this later tonight. So happy.