Soon, you'll be able to download digital versions of the newest japanese novels :-)
Rakuten is basically the Amazon of Japan.

" Rakuten's $315 million buyout of Kobo will bear some e-reader fruit come July. The e-tailer's CEO and chairman, Hiroshi Mikitani, announced plans to release the Kobo eReader Touch Edition in Japan next month for 10,000 yen (on par with its $130 US sticker price). Timing is key, of course -- murmurs of the Kindle Touch's Japanese debut haven't escaped Mikitani's notice. "As a Japanese company, we cannot lose (to overseas rivals)," he told The Asahi Shimbun. Rakuten hopes to use the e-reader to export Japanese content, and aims to have 50,000 titles available by the end of 2012. Pre-orders kick off on July 2, with more details to come next month."

Finally! Now, for the rest of us, does this mean Kobo Touch purchased in other countries will get improved Japanese support too? I would really like to have good J-E/E-J dictionaries, drawn kanji/kana input, and ideally, textbooks like Genki and Dictionary of xxx Grammar. Of course, being able to put Anki on there too would seal the deal.
I have been waiting to purchase an e-reader until the first American vendor can give me my Japanese support.

I just looked it up and apparently it's $100, not $130. Or is something newer coming out in the US? Going to keep this thread in mind because this would be a great opportunity to ramp up my reading.

1 usd is 80 yen today.
10000 yen is 125 usd.

I understand the conversation rate. I guess what I was saying was that assuming we can use the Kobo Touch from other countries as robin asked, we could potentially get it for $100 or less. http://www.kobobooks.com/touch_with_offers

The article says "(on par with its $130 US sticker price)" which either means they're releasing a new version of the Kobo Touch for $30 more than the existing ones in the link I posted or the one for $100 is the model they're speaking of. Do you understand where my confusion is?

Finally some good news. Can't wait!

TheVinster Wrote:I understand the conversation rate. I guess what I was saying was that assuming we can use the Kobo Touch from other countries as robin asked, we could potentially get it for $100 or less. http://www.kobobooks.com/touch_with_offers

I'm not super convinced about this. I think the harse reality will be that publishers are not willing to let their material to be sold outside Japan. Rakuten would also have to be set up to accept forienger credit cards too, and I seem to remember hearing that it's a problem for some stuff.

I don't think Rakuten is attempting to compete with Amazon globally, I think they are just trying to cut them off in Japan. Amazon recently announced deals with Kadokawa (I believe?) for putting all their books on Kindle. Rakuten knows if they want to stand a chance they need to get on the move and get something onto the market. Rakuten is pretty big so I think they stand a good chance of giving Amazon a run for their money.

I actually have a kobo e-reader and would love it if Japanese support got better on it...

Unfortunately, I think most of it is watch-and-see right now.

Of course, japanese don't want gaijin controlling one of their largest industries.
Can anyone find the preorder page? Does it exist?


10000 yen is an awesome price.
Previous e-readers were as much 50000 yen.

I don't care if many of the book publishers don't join.
Just having ANY japanese books would be good enough for me.
Whatever they have, i am sure i'll find something i'll like.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/02/kobo-japan/

http://kobo.rakuten.co.jp/
Let the madness begin...

I had an opportunity to play around with one of these last week, and I was far from impressed. I've never used a Kindle, and I only had a couple minutes to play around with the Kobo, so my opinions may be a little skewed. I'm also mostly comparing the functionality of the Kobo to the functionality of 縦書きビューアー, the Android app I use to read 青空 books.

- Everything feels slow. Page turning, searching for words, opening new books, etc.
- Looking up a word in the built-in dictionary is a difficult process. After trying for about a minute straight, I was never actually able to lookup the word I wanted to look up. The lady letting me test the device also was unable to actually lookup a word. This is not a good sign.
- I feel like the text is somewhat hard to read. It almost feels a little blurry. It's not as clear/crisp as my phone, and it's not as clear/crisp as a real book. The device had a manga on it, and it was also hard to read. The screen is too small to be able to display manga clearly. I'm sure a Japanese person would have no trouble, but it was annoying to me.
- The device had 青空 books on it, so I guess there is some easy way to get them on the phone.
- The lady showing me the device said that the battery lasts for a month, so that's pretty good.

My overall impression is that you should not buy it. It might be worth $20 or so, but I wouldn't spend any more than that on it.

(Of course, take this review with a grain of salt. I only played with it for like 2 or 3 minutes.)

$20?!!! Are you kidding me?

Kobo Touch was one of the best rated e-readers in America.
Rakuten just tweaked it for Japan.

Manga are not good on e-readers because they use pixel-based images (instead of being vector-based like EPUB 3.0 text documents). Since the images are pixel-based, they get pixelated when blown up or scaled down. This doesn't look good on an e-reader screen.

Vector-based text, on the other hand, can be scaled up or down with no loss in quality. What this means is the EPUB 3.0 text documents will look clear and crisp no matter how big or small they are.This will work really well for novels and light novels.

For anything with images (like manga), it's better to get an iPad 3.

Screen refresh on e-readers is slow compared to LCD tablets.
If you used a Kindle, you'd know that.

Also, e-readers have a few distinct advantages over tablets:

1)Battery Life. An iPad gets you 10 hours. An e-reader gets 150+ hours on a single charge.
2)Text is crisp (like a book) and doesn't hurt the eyes (the light from LCD screen are really bad for your eyes and makes them tired).
3)They weigh next to nothing. An iPad weighs 1.5 pounds (heavy compared to e-readers)
4)You can read it in direct sunlight.

Kobo Touch reader will be released on July 19th (tomorrow!).
It is already the #1 item on the Rakuten online store. That's
a very good sign.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/7/prweb9686012.htm

Quote:Kobo Inc., a global leader in eReading, and its parent company Rakuten, the world’s third-largest e-commerce company, today announced that the Kobo Touch™ is selling like hot-cakes in Japan. Since the companies began offering the award-winning Kobo Touch for pre-order on July 2, the eReader has been the top selling product among the over 100,000,000 products available on Rakuten’s supermall.
“We’re thrilled to see this response from the Japanese people,” said Mike Serbinis, CEO, Kobo. “The powerful partnership we have with Rakuten, along with our competitive entry into the market, has clearly delivered on our promise to bring a great consumer experience to Japan.”
The Kobo Touch eReader is currently available for pre-order at http://kobo.rakuten.co.jp/ for ¥7980 including tax (or $100 USD), and Rakuten’s nearly 80,000,000 members are also eligible for additional Rakuten Super Point rebates of between ¥500-3000 (or $7-35) . The Kobo Touch uses the industry standard EPUB 3.0 format which supports Japanese language layout including vertical text and ruby characters. On July 19, Kobo will launch its fully localized Japanese experience with local currency and popular Japanese content and authors. Rakuten customers can use their Rakuten-member ID to purchase content from the site and will earn Rakuten Super Points equivalent to 1 percent of the purchase amount. Rakuten Super Points can be used to purchase eBooks or redeemed across the Rakuten Ecosystem, including Rakuten’s online shopping mall Rakuten Ichiba.
“Japan is one of the world’s most literate and book-loving countries on earth and the desire for digital content in Japan is immense and growing,” said Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO, Rakuten. “We are going to bring the world’s best eReading experience to Japan, customized to the Japanese reader, and will continue to provide consumers with the best e-commerce experience possible.”
Kobo has quickly become a major contender in the global eReading market with triple-digit-growth year-over-year and with expanding presence in Canada, the United States, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand and now Japan. With more than 2.4-million titles available for the Japan market, consumers will be able to access eBooks from their favorite Japan authors as well as titles from around the world including bestsellers, classics, newspapers and magazines.
Kobo’s social reading platform Reading Life™ will also be supported in Japan allowing users to gain insights into their own reading patterns. Reading Life captures the reading behavior of the user – such as how long they read, or how many pages, or their favorite time of day to read – and recognizes the achievement with Reading Life awards. These fun badges can be collected and shared with friends and fellow readers through Reading Life and Facebook™.
The Kobo Touch will be sold through Rakuten’s online shopping mall, “Rakuten Ichiba,” and “Rakuten Books,” as well as through electronics retailers. In addition, consumers can experience the easy-to-use device at dedicated “touch & try” centres that will be set up at major bookstores for people to get the full Kobo experience and ask questions to learn more about eReading and eReaders.
ABOUT KOBO, INC.
Kobo Inc. is one of the world’s fastest-growing eReading services offering more than 2.5 million eBooks, magazines and newspapers– and counting. Believing that consumers should have the freedom to read any book on any device, Kobo has built an open-standards platform to provide consumers with a choice when reading. Inspired by a “Read Freely” philosophy and a passion for innovation, Kobo has registered users in 190 countries, where millions of consumers have access to localized eBook catalogues and award-winning eReaders, like the Kobo Touch. With top-ranked eReading applications for Apple, BlackBerry, Android, and Windows products, Kobo allows consumers to make eReading social through Facebook Timeline and Reading Life, an industry-first social experience that lets users earn awards for time spent reading and encouraging others to join in. Headquartered in Toronto and owned by Tokyo-based Rakuten, Kobo eReaders can be found in major retail chains across the globe.
For more information, visit http://www.kobo.com.

chamcham Wrote:$20?!!! Are you kidding me?

Kobo Touch was one of the best rated e-readers in America.
Rakuten just tweaked it for Japan.

I don't care if it was the best rated electronic device anywhere, at any point in history, ever. I personally wouldn't pay over $20 for it. Mostly because it was hard to read and the dictionary didn't work. I tried to be completely honest in my review. I only played with it for a couple minutes, so I could have just gotten a bad impression.

chamcham Wrote:1)Battery Life. An iPad gets you 10 hours. An e-reader gets 150+ hours on a single charge.
2)Text is crisp (like a book) and doesn't hurt the eyes (the light from LCD screen are really bad for your eyes and makes them tired).
3)They weigh next to nothing. An iPad weighs 1.5 pounds (heavy compared to e-readers)
4)You can read it in direct sunlight.

This was not my experience. I felt the text was blurry and somewhat annoying to read. It's like if you took a photocopy of a photocopy of a newspaper article. Or it would be like trying to read kanji on an old gameboy. Not enough pixels. Although you do have a good point that it's easier on the eyes (aside from having to strain to actually read the text).

You're right that it was light. If I remember correctly, it was as light as or lighter than my phone. It's also entirely possible to use with one hand, just like you'd use a smartphone.

I don't think it's fair to say that the slow screen refresh on the Kindle makes it okay for the Kobo to have a slow screen refresh rate. It's a legitimate complaint, especially when you're used to something fast and responsive.

partner55083777 Wrote:

chamcham Wrote:$20?!!! Are you kidding me?

Kobo Touch was one of the best rated e-readers in America.
Rakuten just tweaked it for Japan.

I don't care if it was the best rated electronic device anywhere, at any point in history, ever. I personally wouldn't pay over $20 for it. Mostly because it was hard to read and the dictionary didn't work. I tried to be completely honest in my review. I only played with it for a couple minutes, so I could have just gotten a bad impression.

chamcham Wrote:1)Battery Life. An iPad gets you 10 hours. An e-reader gets 150+ hours on a single charge.
2)Text is crisp (like a book) and doesn't hurt the eyes (the light from LCD screen are really bad for your eyes and makes them tired).
3)They weigh next to nothing. An iPad weighs 1.5 pounds (heavy compared to e-readers)
4)You can read it in direct sunlight.

This was not my experience. I felt the text was blurry and somewhat annoying to read. It's like if you took a photocopy of a photocopy of a newspaper article. Or it would be like trying to read kanji on an old gameboy. Not enough pixels. Although you do have a good point that it's easier on the eyes (aside from having to strain to actually read the text).

You're right that it was light. If I remember correctly, it was as light as or lighter than my phone. It's also entirely possible to use with one hand, just like you'd use a smartphone.

I don't think it's fair to say that the slow screen refresh on the Kindle makes it okay for the Kobo to have a slow screen refresh rate. It's a legitimate complaint, especially when you're used to something fast and responsive.

It's possible that you were reading a converted PDF that stored the pages
as images. This would make the text blurry and pixelated. If that's the case,
the retailer should know better.

$20 is definitely out of the question for an e-reader.

A $79 Amazon Kindle costs $84 to make (Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Amazon-...13953.html). But that's Amazon, a company that was not profitable for
probably it's first 10 years.

If Kobo is making any profit at all, it's a razor thin margin.

chamcham Wrote:It's possible that you were reading a converted PDF that stored the pages
as images. This would make the text blurry and pixelated. If that's the case,
the retailer should know better.

That's certainly possible. The book in question was an 青空 book. I wonder what the process is like getting 青空 books onto the reader.

partner55083777 Wrote:

chamcham Wrote:It's possible that you were reading a converted PDF that stored the pages
as images. This would make the text blurry and pixelated. If that's the case,
the retailer should know better.

That's certainly possible. The book in question was an 青空 book. I wonder what the process is like getting 青空 books onto the reader.

Aozora books are available on the web in PDF and HTML formats.
I'm guessing they just use the PDF files (instead of manually
converting the HTML files).

Like the previous poster mentioned, that probably also explains
why there was no dictionary lookup. I would suggest looking
for sample books/chapters in the Kobo bookstore. They're more
likely to be EPUB 3.0 books.

chamcham Wrote:Aozora books are available on the web in PDF and HTML formats.
I'm guessing they just use the PDF files (instead of manually
converting the HTML files).

Like the previous poster mentioned, that probably also explains
why there was no dictionary lookup. I would suggest looking
for sample books/chapters in the Kobo bookstore. They're more
likely to be EPUB 3.0 books.

You bring up a good point. Let me clarify what was going on with the dictionary lookup.

I was able to lookup words with the dictionary. However, selection was very finicky and I was never able to actually lookup the word I had intended to look up. I kept getting stray letters around the actual word I wanted to lookup. The lady demonstrating it for me was also having problems.

Since I was able to lookup something in the dictionary, it couldn't have been a pdf of a scanned image.

(Keep in mind, I really only played with the dictionary lookup for a minute or so, until I got annoyed with it. There could be some sort of trick needed in order to select something specific. If not, then I would call it completely unusable.)

That is actually a problem with PDFs (especially Japanese PDFs that were OCR'ed).

If you've ever tried to highlight Japanese words in PDFs, you run into the same problem a lot.
I think it has something to do with the flow and layout of the document.

Also, it could still be a PDF with images.

PDFs have an overlay feature. With OCR (the programs that try to extract words from images), you can superimpose text over an image. So when you copy/paste, the PDF still has an image, but you extract words picked up by the OCR software. It does this by associating text with pieces of an image.

OCR in general (especially with Japanese text) is better than nothing but far from perfect.
In many cases, the text the OCR finds is NOT what is in the image. For example, copy paste a whole paragraph and compare it to the actual text. Don't be surprised if they're nothing a like.

Technically, you could have a human manually correct all the mistakes, but it's too much work and there are too many PDFs.

PDF should die. I would like Adobe Digital Editions to go away too, except that those who love cabbages have already given us effective tools to circumvent the ADE DRM scheme which seems to have become the de facto DRM used by many ebook sellers, and it would be far too annoying to have to deal with a new set of DRM schemes. I've sometimes wondered how ADE came to control ebooks this way.

Which begs the question, what DRM scheme will Rakuten's Kobo be using? Will it also be ADE DRM which Kobo is now using?

http://[video=youtube]http://www.youtube...ag[/video]

Review of the Kobo Touch (with Japanese subtitles).
At 6:39, they use a PDF, which is blurry and small.
But the native format (like the novel shown right before the PDF)
is beautiful. Text is very readable.

At only $100 USD, how many people are getting this?

I'm still waiting on what Amazon is going to do. Currently the rumors are for a Japanese Kindle in August.

Kobo's getting bad reviews...

From the article:

Quote:No, seriously, all of the reviews are down – both good and bad. I suppose there were too many people writing things like “I’m going to buy a Kindle” and that upset someone at Rakuten.

lol...maybe Fillanzea was right.....

The cached page of bad reviews is very informative:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/se...clnk&gl=jp