Correct. I’ve never needed to receive a text message. But I don’t give a real phone number to any online service I’ve ever used, and haven’t had an issue yet.
Not that I know of. All I did was set my vpn to a Japanese server and I was in business. I use NordVPN by the way if that makes any difference.
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I guess you meant you didn’t need to receive a message from the site. Otherwise I don’t understand how you managed to get a message to a fake number.
Oops, yeah, I missed typing the word “never” in “never needed”!
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I live in the UK and I’ve bought print books from cdjapan.co.jp with my UK credit card and got it shipped to my UK address, no VPN or fake address needed. They have an e-book section too, so you could try it out.
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Omg this thread changed my life.
Today I’ve been all over the internet setting up my Japanese kindle and it is dangerous how easy it is to one klick buy new books. I am planning on getting a kindle paperwhite ASAP. My bookshelf is completely packed as well so this is wonderful news!
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I plan to get Harry Potter in Japanese on Pottermore. It is DRM-free pdf plus some mp3 files if you get audiobook as well, which is incredibly handy.
I did it with French and German before, still reading through the German version actually, and I love learning a language through comprehensive content. I am fairly familiar with Harry Potter books, so even if I do not understand much, I still never get lost for too long. And I can guess a lot of words. Besides the books are getting progressively longer and use more advanced language, so they are imho really great for language learning. And since the books are really popular, they usually get the best narrators and translators.
PS: I think it is great, at least as a beginner, to read a book while listening to audio book as it really helps to make the connection between the written and spoken language.
PPS: I may be posting here to get notified about other suggestions.
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I bought an amazon kindle 2 months ago and I have been using it since. Bought all of my ebooks from amazon. So far had no problems with any purchases. But I had to add a made-up address in Japan to the and have been making the purchases with a vpn. Also, the site allows you to make up to 5 purchases before locking your account 
, though you can be unlock it by using the vpn again.
I “purchased” free kindle books from Amazon Japan and had them sent to the Kindle app on my Mac. Following the below directions (thanks sivorn!) it worked without a problem:
https://community.wanikani.com/t/buying-digital-japanese-books/10603/151?u=nightscotsman
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There’s also Aozora Bunko (https://www.aozora.gr.jp/) for an enormous collection of Japanese books and Japanese translations of books from other languages that have entered the public domain.
It has a website and an app. You can also take files from there and put them in a kindle.
In addition to that, there’s みんなの本町 (https://www.bungeisha.jp/), another free library. It has a smaller selection but a better search function. (The books might be more recent, too.) Books can be downloaded as pdf files. みんなの本町 does not have an app, as far as I know.
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I use amazon.co.jp. I prefer it for keeping all of my content organized in a single service. It was interesting reading the comments here, though, because my experience with access and account management is different.
When stateside, I never found I needed to use a VPN. I used an arbitrary physical address for account creation, but after that’s done, I could add an international (non-Japanese) address and then delete the Japanese address I chose.
As others have said, downloading the Japanese Kindle app requires access to the Japanese app store (at least for Android). If you don’t want to monkey with that, you can use the web viewer. It’s sufficient for text, but it’s bothersome for non-vectorized manga. The fonts can been too small to read in some cases, and the images don’t scale without some effort, and even then it’s not graceful.
An interesting note about JP Amazon accounts is that, at least at the time I created mine, you could not reuse the same email address and password as that of any other Amazon identities you might have. This suggests the Amazon IDs are stored in a single collection and are a combination of your email and hashed password, although the services are presented to you as being mutually exclusive otherwise. You could use your email address and a different password for your amazon.co.jp account.
Cheers 
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I don’t know if anyone has posted this already, but Kinokuniya (the large bookstore chain) has an app called Kinoppy that allows people with an address inside or outside of Japan buy and read a lot of magazines (not all of the magazines are available though), certain books and manga. You only need a credit card and the ability to complete the registration process in Japanese.
Please note, that it doesn’t work for all titles but it gives you reading samples for most items, which is helpful at least.
I already bought a few magazines and can recommend it.
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You don’t need the Japanese Kindle app to read books from Amazon Japan. I have the regular US version and can download and read manga just fine.
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Thanks for pointing that out! I just checked my phone, and I am indeed mistaken. I have the US app, but it’s currently using the Japanese locale 
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Thanks for the links. I also want to start with reading real soon now. I already bought DanMachi #1 from Amazon. In addition I have the Englisch paper book.
Also there are sources like 成長チートでなんでもできるようになったが、無職だけは辞められないようです with Japanese web novels. For some of them there are even Englisch translations available online. Some of these translations aren’t very high quality. But pondering about this perhaps it will even be an advantage for a student. Because the translation will be probably pretty literally in these cases.
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I recently made an account for amazon.co.jp and signed up for the kindle unlimited at 980 JPY per month (but i got the first 3 months for 300 JPY in total)
There are plenty of titles (More than a million) for me to dig into this way, from childrens books purely in hiragana to whole novels.
Reading manga is not the easiest, i have to use the windows magnifier tool on the pc kindle reader to read it properly at times, but it has some straight forward key bindings so its not too bad.
(“win-key” + “+ or -” for zooming and “win-key” + “Esc” to close the tool)
Its definitely best for novels as both the actual kindle and the reader app has built in dictionaries for word lookup, (usually the manga are just a scan so you cant mark the words). Im using a JP to JP one, but there are also available ones for JP to ENG.
I got an address from tenso.com (free signup) for the amazon.co.jp account, and since im not really planning on using it for anything but digital reading i dont have to do anything else on that front.
So far ive not needed to use a vpn and i accessed 10 books since i getting it.
No issues using my credit card to sign up for the unlimited either.
Wow I had the same idea a few days ago.
I did the same with English 
It was my first book (well, series…whatever) and was planning on reading it again, this time in Japanese
That’s what made them enjoyable for me too! I had just read the first six in my language in a matter of months (2 times) so I remembered certain words and whole sentences by heart…“owls” was the first word I guessed 
Same, when my English was so weak that I was often in doubt on the pronunciation, I would try and find an audiobook. It made the reading slower, but it was worth it. And it was a real treat for The Hobbit (partly because of all the songs, and partly because of how good the readers/singers/actors were).
The only doubt I had was that my Japanese may not be high enough yet (and I don’t expect it to be in the next 12 months) so I was thinking of starting with something easier (like a manga).
P.S. You forgot of another benefit: you have the translation in your language, in case you want to compare or check your understanding.
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Well, with English, I went bit hardcore starting with Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, and the language there was bit more advanced:) On the other hand, when I got to read Harry Potter in English, it was really easy.
Anyway, I am planning to try Japanese Potter next year, hopefully before summer, I will see. I am glad I am not the only one learning with HP series:)
You are right, I have used this quite a few times myself!
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Update: I decided to try out cdjapan.co.jp myself and bought a zero yen manga (promotional offer) to test it. After buying the ebook on cdjapan (forgot to mention that I actually paid via PayPal the first time I bought books there) you have to download the Neowing Ebook Reader app for Android or iOS, log in with your cdjapan login details, and the book will appear on the ‘bookshelf’ of the app. It takes a few seconds to download and then you can read it. I viewed it on my Android tablet and the size is not bad, though I may still need my reading glasses and/or magnifying glass, because I haven’t played around with the settings on the app yet.
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Hi there,
I am a bit late on this topic, but I thought it was better to ask in here instead of opening a new thread.
I read your previous messages and I found your suggestions about website where to get eBooks and other contents very helpful. I understood that in all cases eBooks can be read only via eBook readers provided by the store the eBook has been purchased from. Can you confirm that?
As some other people has written before me, I prefer to read paper books but because of frequent travelling and limited room in bookshelves I would like to try reading digital versions. However, I would like to keep on practicing my habits while reading a Japanese book: highlight, circle and in general take notes on the page margins or on top of words. For this reason, I am considering of buying a tablet and use it with an associated e-pen.
I am quite sure that if I can buy an eBook in pdf format than I can open it with a notetaker or pdf reader app on the tablet and so take notes while reading. But what about eBook that can be read through seller-made application?
In summary my questions are:
- Is it usually possible in eBook seller made reader apps to take advanced notes like the ones I could take in a normal pdf?
- Do you know any way to purchase books in pdf format? Or do you know a way to convert eBook in pdf?
The ideal way to own an eBook in my opinion is to have the pdf or a file where I take notes and I can store in my computer or tablet and I can read it with any app I choose. Maybe that is not possible, so before going for a tablet I would like to hear from you who are more experienced than me in this matter.
Thank you in advance for your time and recommendations.