How to Buy JP Digital e-Books
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@serah said in Realist Hero Volume 11 is already released in Japan:
It hurts me that I cannot buy the Japanese volumes. Digital content from overseas are always not available, despite you having an amazon account.
If you’re okay with their platform, you can buy volume 11 from Bookwalker. https://bookwalker.jp/de91e1ffce-9718-40c1-bedf-8c75978ae797/
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@serah Do you have an "amazon account", or an "amazon japan account"?
I've been buying books from amazon.co.jp for a few months now, after setting up an account there. I have two books supposed to arrive after Christmas.
My US account doesn't interact with the Japanese Amazon, and vice-versa. But the Japanese account uses my US credit card, and even bills in US currency if I want, so you MIGHT be able to set up something similar.
Not all sellers will ship outside Japan, though; I've got one series I want to buy, but one volume is ONLY available from sellers who do domestic-only, so I haven't bought it yet.
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@LegitPancake + @SomeOldGuy thanks for the tips - though, I am always hitting the language barrier plus I am also lacking a residence in Japan to register.
Therefore I am lacking an "amazon.co.jp" account, to be precise. It is just, that with some stuff like this I feel bad for being unable to buy digital content from amazon Japan despite having an amazon account. Not that I would be able to enjoy the stuff early - as a fan and collector I am just often the original stuff just for the sake of having it (early).
I could even imagine learning Japanese that way - just for manga and novels (lol).
Sorry for my bad English - it is not my native language
As a new member I am sharing my opinion of the membership
Inactive 22.01.20 until I resubscribe -
@serah You don't need a Japanese address to register for Amazon Japan, it's just many items cannot be shipped outside of Japan. They'll ship most books, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays though if amazon is the vendor. Once you have an account you can put the site itself into either Japanese or English and it otherwise works exactly the same as any of the other amazon sites worldwide.
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The topic was shifting off of Realist V11 so I moved some posts to its own topic.
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@serah said in How to Buy JP Digital e-Books:
It is just, that with some stuff like this I feel bad for being unable to buy digital content from amazon Japan despite having an amazon account.
For whatever reason, Amazon Japan and Amazon China are separate ecosystems from the rest of Amazon. There's nothing stopping you from registering an account there (like jpwong said), and Japanese users need a separate account to order from the rest of the world's Amazon too: I don't know why exactly, but it's not like they're trying to lock people out or punish non-Japanese people specifically. That's just the way it's set up.
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The language barrier... Yes, it is an issue... I've been using Chrome to browse amazon.co.jp and it auto-translates about 50% of the page. And a lot of what it doesn't translate automatically can be copied to translate.google.com to cover more.
You can set your account to favor other languages than Japanese, but I don't remember which ones. I get my acknowledgement emails in (mostly) English.
You do need to know how to find the name of what you want in Japanese to search effectively, and familiarity with your native language's amazon site helps with figuring out what some buttons mean.
For example, I've become a fan of トニカクカワイイ, which is by the same author as Hayate the Combat Butler. The romaji spellings for it have been inconsistent, so using the original title finds it faster.
I haven't bought any digital content from them yet; I think you would have to have a kindle or a kindle app registered with them to deliver it to.
My purchases have been "support the author", primarily, since I don't read Japanese at this time.
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@hosikuzu said in How to Buy JP Digital e-Books:
For whatever reason, Amazon Japan and Amazon China are separate ecosystems from the rest of Amazon.
That is not true (for Japan). I used to think so, but TO Books proved that is not the case. Take that URL, and replace amazon.com with amazon.de, amazon.fr, amazon.co.uk and so on. It all point to the same book. Once you deliver kindle book to amazon.co.jp it is super easy to distribute it worldwide. It is just a sheer ignorance of the majority of Japanese publish who does not do so.
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I was only talking about user accounts. Go to amazon japan and make an account with the same e-mail address as your regular amazon account and it will be a new, separate, amazon japan-only account.
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Also if physical books are what you're after, mandarake is cheap and I haven't had any problems with them. They also have a Japanese or English toggle for their website and their customer support is hella awesome. Shipping can be... pricey if you buy just one or two things, but I've found if I spend $20 on books (which can be anywhere from 5 to 12 books depending on sales) the $15 shipping isn't so bad. Aside from really older books, the condition listed on the site is always spot on too (they don't always mention the yellowing of pages or creases in the dustcover).
