(2016-01-11, 9:59 am)PotbellyPig Wrote: I actually find the Google Japanese App Store more convenient.  You need a VPN but after that it's easy.  For Apple your phone seems to be tied to one account which makes switching between the US and Japanese one difficult in order to have all your apps all at once.    If this is not the case anymore, let me know.  Also I have seen cases where Apple will ban your account if it discovers you are overseas.

What VPN do people usually use for Japanese things? I don't trust most free VPNs that you would find on the net so I don't really mess with the Japanese Google Play Store.

As for the iTunes Store, yeah, you do need two accounts, but once you have the IPA downloaded on your computer then you can manually install and uninstall everything regardless of what account you downloaded it on. For what it's worth, I haven't downloaded anything that required money from the Japanese iTunes App Store, but I have been mixing apps from the US (paid and unpaid) and Japanese (free) App Stores without any problems.

My method uses iTunes on the computer to download all of my apps. Sign into Japanese App Store on computer > Click "Get" button so that it downloads locally to my computer > Plug in my iPod and then go to the App management directly on the iPod > Click "Install" on the app(s) that I downloaded > Sync.

It's kind of weird but it works for me. I'm logged into iCloud with my US account but iTunes & App Stores using my Japanese account, but I can still sync and use apps from the US App Store without having to change accounts on my iPod.

(2016-01-11, 10:25 am)zx573 Wrote:

(2016-01-11, 9:59 am)PotbellyPig Wrote: I actually find the Google Japanese App Store more convenient.  You need a VPN but after that it's easy.  For Apple your phone seems to be tied to one account which makes switching between the US and Japanese one difficult in order to have all your apps all at once.    If this is not the case anymore, let me know.  Also I have seen cases where Apple will ban your account if it discovers you are overseas.

What VPN do people usually use for Japanese things? I don't trust most free VPNs that you would find on the net so I don't really mess with the Japanese Google Play Store.

As for the iTunes Store, yeah, you do need two accounts, but once you have the IPA downloaded on your computer then you can manually install and uninstall everything regardless of what account you downloaded it on. For what it's worth, I haven't downloaded anything that required money from the Japanese iTunes App Store, but I have been mixing apps from the US (paid and unpaid) and Japanese (free) App Stores without any problems.

My method uses iTunes on the computer to download all of my apps. Sign into Japanese App Store on computer > Click "Get" button so that it downloads locally to my computer > Plug in my iPod and then go to the App management directly on the iPod > Click "Install" on the app(s) that I downloaded > Sync.

It's kind of weird but it works for me. I'm logged into iCloud with my US account but iTunes & App Stores using my Japanese account, but I can still sync and use apps from the US App Store without having to change accounts on my iPod.

I've used the Overplay VPN.  Thanks for the apple tutorial,  but I'm a little afraid they might ban an account if they see a fake address, accessing outside Japan, etc..  I think I've seen people post that before.

(2016-01-11, 9:59 am)PotbellyPig Wrote: I actually find the Google Japanese App Store more convenient.  You need a VPN but after that it's easy.  For Apple your phone seems to be tied to one account which makes switching between the US and Japanese one difficult in order to have all your apps all at once.    If this is not the case anymore, let me know.  Also I have seen cases where Apple will ban your account if it discovers you are overseas.

It's pretty easy to switch you account on the phone and log into the Japanese Apple Store; you can buy and download apps directly from there. 

I've had Japanese iTunes accounts for years, and haven't ever seen an instance of banning. Given the prevalence of Japanese expats, I'd be very surprised if they still did this.

(2016-01-11, 9:31 am)zx573 Wrote:

(2016-01-11, 3:38 am)Bokusenou Wrote:

(2016-01-10, 9:01 pm)zx573 Wrote: Not exactly about FeBe, but I decided to give buying an ebook off the Japanese Kinokuniya website a shot, and it worked perfectly with my US VISA credit card. I didn't give my address or anything when I signed up, but I did select 東京都 for my location. It doesn't seem to matter, though. At any rate, I figured I'd post about it in case someone else wanted an ebook copy to go with whatever audiobooks they buy. I purchased it through the website, but it looks like you can also purchase books through the app after you login using your account for the Japanese Kinokuniya website.

I figure this way I can double check what I don't catch and it'll give me something to focus on while listening.

Woah, really? Can you use the ebook without getting the Kinoppy app? Did you need to use a proxy to buy it?
The Kinoppy app isn't available on the US Play Store, so it would be great if I could buy ebooks from there & then convert them to mobi format to put on my Kindle..

You need the Kinoppy app to use it on cellphones, but if you get the APK from the internet (use at your own risk) then it might work. If you have an iOS device then it's simple to get Japanese apps from the iTunes store, but Google's Play Store is a pain.

I was curious about the format they use for the ebooks, it looks like it's an encrypted XML-based format called XMDF that was created by Sharp. I don't think you're going to have much luck converting them to another format without going through an indirect method. When I searched, I saw a bunch of blog posts about how people used automated screen captures to screenshot and save all of the pages in their books and then stitch them up into the format of their choice.


@TheVinster: Go to 文芸・落語 > 現代小説. Cuts out all of the self-improvement crap if you're looking for *just* audiobooks of novels.

Thanks! The download worked. It's too bad that converting the XMDF files isn't easy...Oh well.

I decided I should probably read ahead a bit in オレたち first, so I gave another interesting-seeming title a spin: 神様のカルテ. Did a half hour, and it's very approachable. Some technical terms related to medical care that you need to know, but if you've already picked them up from watching Doctors or まっしろ or something, you should be good. Available on Kindle as well (http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E7%A5%9E%E6%A7%...B%E3%83%86).

(2016-01-12, 8:16 am)Bokusenou Wrote: Thanks! The download worked. It's too bad that converting the XMDF files isn't easy...Oh well.

Cool, glad it worked. I reverse engineer as a hobby/freelance job kind of thing so I enjoy trying to crack DRMs among other things, and today I worked out a way to strip the files from Kinokuniya's online shop of DRM. It requires a valid license which you can only get after buying the book and opening it on the official Windows Kinoppy reader program. I'm not sure if the admin would really like it if I posted something like that here, though. :x

It's possible to make full, DRM-less EPUBs without any loss of data. The XMDF and BOOK aren't so lucky, though. Luckily, it looks like the majority of the books on Kinokuniya seems to be EPUB and I just happened to grab one that was XMDF. I ended up buying the EPUB of a book by one of my favorite Japanese authors and it works perfectly when rebuilt without DRM.

(2016-01-12, 4:58 pm)gaiaslastlaugh Wrote: I decided I should probably read ahead a bit in オレたち first, so I gave another interesting-seeming title a spin: 神様のカルテ. Did a half hour, and it's very approachable. Some technical terms related to medical care that you need to know, but if you've already picked them up from watching Doctors or まっしろ or something, you should be good. Available on Kindle as well (http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E7%A5%9E%E6%A7%...B%E3%83%86).

I saw 神様のカルテ while I was browsing and was kind of interested in it. You should post later once you finish it if it's any good.

I finished up to chapter 2 of 世界から猫が消えたなら and it's not that bad so far. I sometimes have to check the ebook because I don't catch some things, but for the most part it's not hard to understand at an N2-ish level.

(2016-01-12, 8:48 pm)zx573 Wrote:

(2016-01-12, 8:16 am)Bokusenou Wrote: Thanks! The download worked. It's too bad that converting the XMDF files isn't easy...Oh well.

Cool, glad it worked. I reverse engineer as a hobby/freelance job kind of thing so I enjoy trying to crack DRMs among other things, and today I worked out a way to strip the files from Kinokuniya's online shop of DRM. It requires a valid license which you can only get after buying the book and opening it on the official Windows Kinoppy reader program. I'm not sure if the admin would really like it if I posted something like that here, though. :x

It's possible to make full, DRM-less EPUBs without any loss of data. The XMDF and BOOK aren't so lucky, though. Luckily, it looks like the majority of the books on Kinokuniya seems to be EPUB and I just happened to grab one that was XMDF. I ended up buying the EPUB of a book by one of my favorite Japanese authors and it works perfectly when rebuilt without DRM.

Woah, that's amazing! If you don't mind, could you PM it to me? I've stripped files of DRM with the DeDRM Calibre plugin before, but I'm thinking this might be more complicated...

(2016-01-12, 10:00 pm)Bokusenou Wrote:

(2016-01-12, 8:48 pm)zx573 Wrote:

(2016-01-12, 8:16 am)Bokusenou Wrote: Thanks! The download worked. It's too bad that converting the XMDF files isn't easy...Oh well.

Cool, glad it worked. I reverse engineer as a hobby/freelance job kind of thing so I enjoy trying to crack DRMs among other things, and today I worked out a way to strip the files from Kinokuniya's online shop of DRM. It requires a valid license which you can only get after buying the book and opening it on the official Windows Kinoppy reader program. I'm not sure if the admin would really like it if I posted something like that here, though. :x

It's possible to make full, DRM-less EPUBs without any loss of data. The XMDF and BOOK aren't so lucky, though. Luckily, it looks like the majority of the books on Kinokuniya seems to be EPUB and I just happened to grab one that was XMDF. I ended up buying the EPUB of a book by one of my favorite Japanese authors and it works perfectly when rebuilt without DRM.

Woah, that's amazing! If you don't mind, could you PM it to me? I've stripped files of DRM with the DeDRM Calibre plugin before, but I'm thinking this might be more complicated...

I'd actually like that too if its possible.  I use Kinoppy on windows and this would be very useful to me.

On the topic of audiobook stores, what's the story with Kikubon? I wanted to buy this Arslan audiobook [1], but couldn't figure out whether Kikubon was like Audible in that you pay a monthly fee for all their content, if I could download the audio to a non-networked iPod-like device, or how exactly one went about buying the thing. I live in the US, if that helps.

[1] http://kikubon.jp/product.php?aKey=17

It looks like it requires a smartphone, and then you stream the books to that. You rent a book in exchange for points, where one point equals one yen.