Where can I buy untranslated Japanese light novels aside from Amazon. jp?

23 comments

1. I get mine from bookwalker

2. You should add your country.

   Also if nothing else works, there are always proxy services you can use to ship stuff your way.

3. [ebay.com](https://ebay.com)

   [usa.kinokuniya.com](https://usa.kinokuniya.com/)

   [www.bookoffusa.com](https://www.bookoffusa.com)

   [www.play-asia.com/books/japanese_books/14/7114k](https://www.play-asia.com/books/japanese_books/14/7114k)

4. Are you in the USA? amazon.com (the USA one) has some of the most common books.

   For instance:

   https://www.amazon.com/s?k=%E9%AD%94%E5%A5%B3%E3%81%AE%E5%AE%85%E6%80%A5%E4%BE%BF&crid=2SJ8OY9RL9ESH&sprefix=%E9%AD%94%E5%A5%B3%E3%81%AE%E5%AE%85%E6%80%A5%E4%BE%BF%2Caps%2C82&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

   Besides that, there is kinokuniya. If you have one near you there are a LOT of books.

5. I’ve bought some manga and light novels from cdjapan before. But I’d also recommend bookwalker (Japanese store) because shipping costs can accumulate to a pretty heavy sum. But yeah if you want something physical I’d recommend cdjapan and bookwalker for digital (as an alternative to the Web novels I guess)

6. I always buy mine from Yahoo Auctions. They’re usually second hand so it might not be for everyone but that means they’re also significantly cheaper than everywhere else. If you’re lucky you might even be able to find entire collections for free (excluding shipping obviously)

   If you’re outside of Japan though you will have to go through a proxy service to ship them to you which will make things a little more expensive but not too much. I recommend Zenmarket

7. Your options are:

   1. Amazon.co.jp with a random Japanese address (hotel etc) to buy digital LNs

   2. Piracy (nyaa.si, z-lib, the moe way #book-sharing channel on discord, itazuraneko, boroboro)

   3. Buying physical copies from amazon.co.jp (ship to your address)

8. I’ve been using ebookjapan.

9. I got some books through kinokuniya’s website. They have locations in my country (USA) and they shipped the books to me.

10. If you want to take the free route, you can read free previews of light novels at some book publisher sites. For example, here is the light novel section of the kadokawa website: [https://www.kadokawa.co.jp/product/search/?mgenre=86&releaseDate=1&indexFlg=1](https://www.kadokawa.co.jp/product/search/?mgenre=86&releaseDate=1&indexFlg=1)

    ​

    Main website is here: [https://www.kadokawa.co.jp](https://www.kadokawa.co.jp)

    Light novel is written as “ライトノベル”.

    ​

    Reading previews are called “tachiyomi”.

    They are not small. Some previews are over 50 pages long!

    So although you don’t get the whole book, you can read enough to get a good idea of the story.

11. ヤフオク via Buyee is a good bet

12. CDJapan and if you’re in Europe [Verasia.eu](https://Verasia.eu) , but they have a much bigger manga and textbook selection.

13. I’m a fan of Honto

14. Digital? Bookwalker. I do it all the time from Canada.

15. If you have a Kindle the easiest way is probably to make an account on Japanese Amazon and connect it with your Kindle, I did it myself a month ago and it’s great. Lots of great books are super cheap, and you can even find Meiji era classics for free!

16. Amazon is easy though. Type in the address of some Japanese hotel, make one purchase while connected to JP VPN, then purchases will go through normally for a long time.

17. Amazon.co.jp will ship to the US but you have to pay with a Japanese credit card. Fuckers.

    Audiobooks.jp works with Apple Pay. A pleasant surprise. There’s some great quality voice acting going into Japanese audiobooks. Did you really want to read that Japanese light novel? Wouldn’t you rather have your favorite anime voices read it to you?

18. Idk about amazon but there is this bookstore in australia called kinokuniya and they have alot of untranslated manga idk if they have international shipping tho

19. I use a Japanese iTunes Store account and buy JPY iTunes gift cards from play-asia for payment

20. I go to my manga/comics store and ask for the specific one I want, then they help me getting it as a special order. It’s also not much more expensive (at least for me).

21. There’s a Japanese website called Zebracks ぜブラック which has a bunch on manga and stuff. You can read one chapter a day for free but u need an account. I’ve been using to read one piece.

22. I’ve bought whole collections of books through Buyee.

23. You can go to [https://syosetu.com/](https://syosetu.com/) for some online web novels but most are pretty much catered towards young adults/teens, and are mostly fantasy novels. The great thing is that there’s many free novels, but might have lots of slangs and loanwords or casual Japanese