Right know for Kobo i use an older desktop app (Windows), download them, and use a calibur plugin (I think it’s Obok) to rip them to epub. It’s a pretty easy process once you get it set up (other than the desktop app being shit).
You have to close the desktop app before opening calibur though or it fucks up.
I got shadow banned by Rakuten/Kobo for unclear reasons. My best guess was something to do with the address I signed up with.
This is disconcerting to say the least.
What exactly do you mean by “shadow” banned? Usually it refers to forums or comment sections letting you in but not showing your content to others, what does it mean here? Do you still have access to the books you bought?
Getting banned by a storefront sounds like a dystopia.
Login just silently refuses my password. I can reset it via the reset password flow, but then it still rejects the new one, no matter how many times I reset it. If I had not removed DRM from the books I bought, I would not have continued access to them.
That‘s larceny (on their end). Do they react if you ask about the reason?
Support refuse to engage until I provide the address on the account, which… I don’t actually know since I just picked a random address on google maps in japan since it needed a Japanese address.
The only reason I found out it was a shadow ban is because I googled the symptoms and found people on reddit discussing it - though usually it seems to be done in connection to their reseller marketplace in the US which I’ve never used.
So their standpoint could be that you are trying to hijack the account, as the rightful owner would of course know their own address. Hmm, I have no idea how to solve this. 
This isn’t terribly helpful, but there’s some intermediary delivery service site that will give you an address when you sign up for it. I don’t remember what it is, but that’s where I got the address that I use. (I’ve just saved it in a notepad file ever since) Using some random person’s address seems a little weird.
If you can at least remember what city you were in you could try and say that was a temporary address and that you don’t remember the house number and whatnot and ask if there’s another way they could verify you. It may not work, but speaking from someone who has lived in temporary housing when arriving in new countries it is a scramble to find that information when you do need it. Luckily(?) I tend to buy quite a few things online and can usually find it on some website as a shipping address 
I only buy on web sites that accept my real data. Sites that don’t want my money, won’t get my money.
At this point, if you already have your books anyway, you may as well just tell them the truth. Doesn’t really matter if your account gets deleted…
Right but they blocked my login long before I ever talked to support.
Oh sure, but it’s not in their support script to do anything with that. The support agent script just has “matching address not provided, refuse support” in their instructions
I mean, I know it was a store in Kyoto, but that doesn’t help narrow it down lol.
This is basically what it came down to, I tried buying stuff from them, they threw up too many roadblocks, so back to Bookwalker it is.
This is the reason why I still have a Windows partition on my desktop. Some stuff just doesn’t work on Linux.
It could probably be bodged to work on Linux with Wine and a lot of effort, but I don’t have the patience for that.
Wait, so do I have to go and find an old version of the Kobo app on a sketchy site to be able to remove the DRM like I had to do with Kindle books?
Good to know.
It works with bottles almost straight out of the box. I only changed one environment variable to make Calibre work in the same container.
I haven’t used my windows partition in forever…
Edit: For me it worked with the official Kobo Windows Desktop app from the Kobo website. No sketchy site needed.
For manga you have an alternative with Renta. But they have less sales etc. as they are not directly affiliated with a publisher. They also have an App to read manga offline.
How is the scan quality on Renta? I’ve found it very variable on Amazon and (less often) Bookwalker as well
My usual test cases are ホリミヤ (universally bad) and ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 (Amazon has better scans than others).
Unfortunately both are bad on Renta. スーパーの裏でヤニ吸うふたり looked ok.
Seems like the same (or a similar) thing that happened to @araigoshi also happened to me 
Yesterday I made an account with my Japan VPN turned on. I registered on Rakuten and bought a book on kobo (went with kobo because they apparently don’t need an address for purchases).
Today I got an error message that my login data is wrong when I tried to log in on kobo, and an error message that my account has been locked when I tried to log in on rakuten 
I’m still logged in on the app though, and it seems like I can still buy books? 
Not sure where I went wrong, because someone I know did virtually the same thing and they still have access to their account 
Guess I’ll need to somehow figure out this Bookwalker thing
Edit: Turns out I can stick with Amazon for a bit longer. My old Kindle Paperwhite 2 will find some use again
Ugh. Sounds really ominous.
I made a Rakuten Books account first, with VPN on just in case. But the process didn’t ask me for my address until right before making a purchase. At that point I just added my real Finnish address; when you click on the 外国 checkbox it seems that most form validation is just turned off. When I logged into Kobo the first time it recognized my Rakuten account. I’d be curious to hear if this was also the route you guys took?
Now I wonder how long it will take before my account also gets locked out. Luckily the two books I bought are now safely backed up as ePubs.
I did it the same way up until my first purchase.
I logged into kobo ( https://www.kobo.com/jp/ja ) with my Rakuten ID and bought the book from there. I didn’t have to enter any address for that. (I don’t think there is an address linked with my account at all)
