I thought I would take a detour this week and recommend a new Japanese-language resource that has recently started to add materials - and best of all, many of them are 無料.
Last fall, Amazon launched the Japanese-language edition of its popular Kindle ebook reader and began selling Kindle books from Amazon.jp. The kindle reader is useful because it allows anyone with an iOS or Android device to read an ebook as long as they have the free Kindle app installed on their mobile device. Sadly, you must have a Japanese address associated with your Amazon account to take advantage of Amazon.jp's Japanese-language selection. Publishers in Japan and publishers in America still cannot agree on how to divide the market and of course, consumers suffer.
However, the US Amazon website (amazon.com) has recently and slowly been adding Japanese-language books for US customers to download. These books download to your Kindle and/or your Kindle reader on your iPhone, iPad, on Android device and look just like a real Japanese book. The dictionary feature even works like it does in Japan, which is both good and bad, since if you look up a word you will get the definition only in Japanese. Beware, you will not be able to cut-and-paste into Denshi-jisho or other such applications because the Kindle software prevents that.
Right now the US Amazon store features about 11,000 Japanese-language Kindle ebooks for download and many of them are either free or just a few dollars.
WARNING: DO NOT CLICK ON THE BELOW LINK WITHOUT READING THE FOLLOWING: This link is, unfortunately, NOT SAFE FOR WORK. While there is no obvious way to filter the results of your search on Amazon to screen them out, there are a huge number of pornographic or semi-pornographic books for sale on the US Japanese language Kindle store. If you would like to avoid viewing those types of books, I've included direct links to the SciFi and Literature and Fiction sections. I also included a work-safe link to Children's books in Japanese because, if you are like me, you might find a little more luck reading books designed for readers with a limited vocabulary.
All Japanese Language Kindle Books in the U.S. Amazon store (LINK NOT SAFE FOR WORK)
Japanese Language Sci-Fi Books (Kindle Edition)(Work-Friendly)
Japanese Language Literature and Fiction (Kindle Edition)(Work-Friendly)
Japanese Langauge Childrens Books (Kindle Edition)(Work-Friendly)