I also check bookwalker everyday and mark all the Natively books that are free, but it usually only comprises a small portion of the free books. 
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Amazon Japan, but I used to use Apple Books before using TTU/Yomichan. I’ll rarely buy physical books – no lookups and they take up space.
Hopefully, I’ll either keep hold of one debit/credit card when I leave Japan or just pick up a couple of １万円 gift cards from the conbini.
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If you have a credit card/debit card issued from a major issuer (Visa, Mastercard, etc.) you won’t need a Japanese card. I’m not sure how many of the other sites allow you to use Paypal and LINE pay, though, because those are also always options.
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There are banks that issue JCBs overseas.
Mine used to, and I was able to bypass a lot of locks with it, including JP iTunes.
Might be worth looking into, if you need an accepted payment method for some locked sites.
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Before my country got weird with imports:
mostly physical:
- bookoff (while in Japan)
- honto.jp
- kinokuniya.jp
- yahoo auctions (via fromjapan proxy)
- mandarake (for Manga)
After my country got weird with imports:
electronically only:
- amazon.jp (vpn, baby!)
- audible.jp (though recently, I have noticed more Japanese releases on my local audible as well
)
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Amazon JP for physicals and ebooks!
I’m always amazed at how it arrives in 2 weeks at most, I live completely accross the globe haha the shipping usually stays at about 2000 yen and there’s a 10% tax from my credit card, so I rarely buy anything.
It’s still cheaper and faster than buying at specialized national bookstores that import books tho. Apparently it’s not legal to import used books in my country so I can only buy new.
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That’s wild to me. 
I don’t know if this is also a country specific thing or not, but for myself (in America) some credit cards will charge international transaction fees (which can indeed be quite high!) and others do not. I actually specifically sought out cards without such fees and only have one that has them and I kick myself whenever I accidentally use it for something not local.
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i mostly buy ebooks from Amazon Japan - you don’t need a Japanese credit card, but i don’t remember if you need a vpn or a japanese address (i think i put my company’s japanese address lmao), and i use vpn all the time anyway. i prefer amazon because i can, actually, download the book on my computer, remove the drm, and put it on my ebook reader of choice.
…which is a kindle anyway, but it’s registered with the american account, so i can’t import ebooks from the japanese account onto it. most other sites like bookwalker or cmoa only allow you to read on their website or their app, and personally if i own something, i want to be able to keep it on my hard drive.
i prefer physical books but importing those is expensive, so most physicals i have i bought while i was in Japan, or was gifted by other people. usually if anyone in my friend group, or someone they know, is planning on visiting japan, they ask for a combined shoplist from everyone and get things that way.
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That is genuinely the only reason why I have a love-hate relationship with cmoa…though if you know how to run codes, there is a way.
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maybe someday when i actually do learn some coding as i’ve been meaning to do i will use cmoa more often lmao
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This is pretty much what I do, minus the flashcard part, because I’m too lazy for that. I buy my Japanese ebooks on Amazon JP, download them with the Kindle for PC app, de-DRM them and convert them to HTML with Calibre. Then I read them in my browser where I use the 10ten plugin that provides a dictionary that displays English translations whenever you hover over an unknown Japanese word with your mouse.
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When I buy physical ones I use Manga Republic. Free shipping, and very very well packaged.
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I am not a fan of digital books only because I get so distracted when I’m online (I am open to hearing out a good eReader for reading Japanese Manga in), so I buy physical.
I used to buy a handful online, and then I learned I was within reasonable driving distance of a US Kinokuniya. I have such a stack of manga that I’m slowly going through and spend too much money each time I go. I have no regrets.
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I use a cheap android tablet. It literally only has the stuff on it, I need for reading. (I.e. no distractions) For manga, I use the OCR Manga Reader, which is great. For ebooks, I use kiwi browser with ttu and yomichan. 
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Same here. Super cheapo Android tablet with (almost) literally just the Kindle app and a dictionary installed.
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I have a Fire tablet for the same reason. 
If there was a $200-$250 iPad in the smaller 8 inch size I would probably buy one. But I don’t need a $500 tablet just to get that size (iPad Mini) and I don’t want a bigger tablet (base iPad) since it’s inconvenient for reading.
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That doesn’t work for me unfortunately. I always end up using it for other purposes, which is why an eReader would be better for my lack of self-control. I have one for reading English books and I get so much reading done with it, but any Japanese text is so difficult to read on it
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My go to is Amazon.co.uk but I usually either buy the used books sold buy book depository or one of the Japanese sellers so it comes from Japan or I purchase the books new if they’re only slightly dearer than the used ones. Same sellers though. It’s quicker and cheaper for me to purchase that way than to get them from any of the European sellers.
For some reason, I can’t purchase or make an account on amazon.jp to get access to the ebooks so most of my books are physical copies unless the ebooks were free on amazon.co.uk.
There also doesn’t seem to be any Japanese bookstores in my local areas and the local bookstores tend not to have access to get any Japanese books even if I give the isbn numbers.
Failing that my books are audio books from audible since they do have a good selection of Japanese novels and light novels usually spoken by a native speaker so good for listening to.
I’ve got a kindle fire that I use for reading the few Japanese ebooks I have. It lets me change the Japanese font and size of the writing, not sure if the other kindles let you do the same though.
It is an e-reader with tablet capability but the tablet side is poor so best if only used for reading and for the dictionary apps.
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One of the reasons why I got back into reading was because I wanted to shorten my usage of electronics, so I only buy physical books.
I buy mostly from Amazon JP, Kinokuniya (I signed up for their membership so I’m trying to make the most out of it) and CDJapan. Shipping from all three are expensive but I tend to buy other things along with books from Amazon and CDJ anyway.
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