This guide is aimed to help teach our readers how to purchase books from Japanese sites. There was an issue with our image hosting site so the images disappeared. Guide is still a WIP. I’ll complete it ASAP!
For starters, I recommend using browsers like Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge that comes with a preinstalled translator plugin. If you use neither of those, you can just google browser translator plugin and a plugin for your browser should show up.
Once you have it installed, you should be able to navigate the website a lot easier.
First, press the red button to create your account. Fill out your email in the area provided.
Amazon.jp is Amazon based in Japan. Pretty self explanatory since it’s Amazon. Depending on what you’re trying to buy, the seller may not be willing to ship to your country.
Pros: It’s Amazon so… the site has almost everything you could be look for including; ebooks, merch, artbooks, physical books. Ebook raws can be ripped.
Cons: Depending on the seller they may not ship worldwide,
BookWalker is a Japanese bookstore website with a wide selection ranging from light novels to manga and artbooks.
Pros: Has a large collection of ebooks, friendly to international customers.
Cons: Does not sell physical books.
Honto is the website that I would personally recommend because all of our raws are from Honto. Their website has an English guide on how to register and purchase.
Pros: Has a mobile app so you can have you collection saved on your phone, daily sales and discount coupons so you’re always guaranteed at minimum a 15-25% sale, collection has both physical and ebooks, doesn’t require a Japanese address or card to pay, higher quality raws than sites like Cmoa and Renta.
Cons: Barely any doujins in their collection, can’t pay with Paypal.
After filling out your email, click the link in the email they send you.
Fill out all the info inside the link. The only issue that you should run into is the name area. The site wants you to use a Japanese name, so for the first box visit KanjiName – a website for converting English names into their Kanji counterpart. Then for the second box after that it wants the Furigana for your name. So you can go to this site and put your English name and it’ll give you the text. Once you fill out everything, you should be able to register successfully.
Now that you have an account, you can add books to your cart. You can add books to cart without an account, but it’s going to make you register when you pay so might as well get it over with now.
The easiest way to purchase books from Honto is using a credit/debit card. I haven’t ordered physical books from Honto before so I’m not sure if they do international deliveries. Most likely not.
Kinokuniya is a Japanese bookstore that has started to open up shop all around the world. If you check out their website you’ll see that they’re slowly trying to spread over to the west. Depending where you’re from there might be a chain in your country.
Pros: Has a large collection of physical books and merch, ships worldwide.
Cons: Does not sell ebooks (yet as of 2024), for a Japanese bookstore they don’t have the best discount/sales offer.