I’m sorry if this seems stupid, but I am absolutely awful with technology 
I lived in England for a while, and I remember that the DVDs were different, so I couldn’t play the English DVDs in my American player. I’m assuming it’s the same for Japanese DVDs?
So my main question is: Do I need a Japanese DVD player in order to watch Japanese movies? Will those work with American TVs?
Also: If I want to download online media, such as Japanese kindle books, music and videos off of Amazon.co.jp, will they work with an American computer/American Kindle? I tried to buy music off a different Amazon before and I was told it wouldn’t work because it wasn’t compatible. I have no idea how that works but the music didn’t work so I guess they were right 
I would prefer to get my things online so I don’t need to pay an extra 10-20 bucks for shipping.
Also also: How can I get Japanese movies with Japanese subtitles? I’m not at the point yet where I can understand speaking at a native speed, so I would prefer to have subtitles to follow along with.
Thanks in advance 
You are right, you can’t play Japanese DVDs in a region-locked player from outside of Japan, but you can play them on a computer using VLC, or on an unlocked player. Most standalone DVD players have some sort of cheat code you can Google then input to remove the region-locking, particularly Chinese-made ones.
As for the Kindle, you can sign in with multiple accounts at once, so you can read your Amazon.co.jp books and Amazon.com books on the same device as long as you’re actually able to buy them online. For the music and videos, I don’t know.
Most Japanese-language shows and films on Netflix have Japanese subtitles, although I think sometimes they only appear if you have your display language for Netflix set to Japanese.
Looking at a map of DVD region codes, it looks like a European player would work with Japanese discs.
Blu-rays seem to be a bit more open.
That helps a lot 
Thank you!
That definitely helps Looks like I’ve had a stroke of luck too, since the only player we kept was our European Blu-ray one!
European Blu-ray players will unfortunately not play Japanese Blu-ray’s. Japan is region code A/1 so only only North or South American Blu-ray players would work.
I wasn’t paying attention to what map I was looking at 
Oh well. I guess I’ll stick to using VLC
VLC will certainly allow you to play DVD’s regardless of where you live as it operates as a region-free solution for DVD playback.
If you need to play Blu-ray’s, you would either need an A/1 Blu-ray player from Japan or America, or if you pick up a Blu-ray disc drive for your computer and Blu-ray capable software (VLC would not work), you can switch your region to A/1 and play Blu-ray’s on your computer. Most Blu-ray software only allows you to switch regions a certain number of times though.
I don’t know about BD content, but changing a DVD player to region 0/9 (region-free) is quite easy and can be done on most (if not all) players out there.
Also, keep in mind that some kinds of content, such as music concerts, are usually region free. You can easily find this kind of information with the retailer.
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