It’s time to make your Christmas or holiday gift lists. If you are looking for a new way to enhance your Japanese studies, reading books in Japanese is one of the best methods. Still, it’s hard to find books in Japanese at the airport Hudson News bookstore. But if you start a Japanese Kindle or iBookstore account, you can start downloading free and cheap Japanese books immediately.

Recently, both Amazon Japan and iTunes Japan have made their bookstores even better tools for studying and learning Japanese by adding English dictionaries to their iOs applications. (Disclaimer: I’m not sure and haven’t tried to see if this works in Android - if it does, please let me know!). To start with, you need to have an Amazon Japan account or a Japanese iTunes account.

You can make a Japanese iTunes account from anywhere, you just need to buy a Japanese iTunes gift card.

You can buy them online, and don’t even have to receive the physical card to get started - you just need the code off the back of the card.

Lots of places online sell the cards, such as Jlist and JBox.com

Here are some useful guides:

http://www.deliciousjapanese.com/2013/08/20/how-to-create-a-japanese-itunes-account/

http://nihongoperapera.com/store/itunes-japan-registration-guide-no-cc.html

Now is a great time to buy - the dollar is very strong against the Yen!

Once you get an account, you can download Japanese books from the Japanese iBooks store.

If you want to carry them around, find an old iPhone or tablet you aren’t using anymore and switch it to the Japanese iTunes store using your new account.

Here’s the cool thing - now you can read Japanese books, and just click on the word for the English definition!

For Amazon, it’s similar - but there’s a catch! Amazon Japan will only sell you Japanese digital downloads if it thinks that you are living in Japan - so you have to provide a Japanese address. It doesn’t have to be your real address; you can find a friend or a friendly address. You might even have to use a VPN from time to time. Here’s a guide:

http://nihonjon.com/how-to-download-japanese-books-for-kindle/

Once you get an account, you can download Japanese books from the Japanese Kindle store.

If you want to carry them around, find an old phone or tablet you aren’t using anymore and switch it to the Japanese Kindle store using your new account.

Here’s the cool thing - now you can read Japanese books, and just click on the word for the English definition!

Anyone try this with Rakuten or Yahoo? I’d love to hear about it.