e-books

Hi,
Does anybody have some experience with e-books? That is living outside of Japan and ordering books from Japan (for instance Amazon.co.jp).
Are there specific things you have to watch if you buy an e-book reader outside of Japan (in my case Europe)?
I hope somebody can share some experience.
Butch

I've got a US kindle that I use in both the US and Japan. Amazon.co.jp doesn't sell ebooks though, so if you are looking to use it to purchase Japanese books you may want to look into some of the other readers instead. The sony readers might be worth checking out, as their Japanese ebook store is scheduled to open tomorrow:

http://ebookstore.sony.jp/

Yllwsmrf, Thanks for the link.

I hope somebody can share some experience with buying/downloading ebooks from Japan (maybe other than Amazon or Sony if there are any other sources).

Butch

Just so you know, you can use a free program called mobipocket to convert to book format for kindle! Also there is a japanese gutenberg project with free japanese books.

http://www.aozora.gr.jp/

I also used mobipocket to convert manga projects into books.

Project Gutenberg has renamed most of their MOBI links into Kindle links; but for conversions I would like to recommend Calibre, it is free and awsome: http://calibre-ebook.com/

Thanks Hoshihato for the link.
I had found and installed that program already.

Sofare i was not able to find a free Japanese epub file that i can use to experiment to see how it looks in a local bought ebook reader or the internal viewer of Calibre.
Note. The Aozora site only holds (as far as i have tried) (X)html files and no epub files with up down Japanes writing.
Note2 I can not read/write Japanese. My wife can but is not technical.

Hope somebody can give me some ideas to continue my research on buying a local ebook reader and buying/downloading Japanese books from Japan.
Butch

Hi,
I contacted Sony Japan about the possibility to order books from their ebook site (http://ebookstore.sony.jp/) from abroad. They informed me that for doing this you need an creditcard issued in Japan.

Also they said they could not warrant that if i buy locally a Sony ebook reader (same version nummer as sold in Japan) that this reader would work with the Japanese ebooks from there site!!!
And ofcourse they reiterated that the warranty is not valid outside of Japan if i buy a Japanese model.

So that takes care of all the people interested in Japanese books from abroad via Sony. I guess they do not like/want that.

Hi,
In my research to get a local (Europe) ebook reader that handles Japanese fonts (including left to right and up to down) i am not making much progress.
What i like to get is an ebook file (no DRM, free, preferably epub format) so i can try out the ebook readers in a store. So far i was not able to get such a file.
Can somebody help me (either a link to an internet location or email me. The content of the book is irrelavant as it is only for a test.
Butch