Amazon Japan … but you can’t read Japanese?

For those of you out there who make extensive use of Amazon to buy books and whatever else, I’m guessing that perhaps if you’ve now moved to Japan at least temporarily, you’re stumped at the first hurdle when you visit the Amazon JP store.  It’s all in Japanese, right?  Mostly, but once you’ve signed up, you can get around in English no problem.  So, I’m going to provide a mini-how-to on signing up to the Amazon Japan site.

So to begin, simply go to www.amazon.co.jp.  It will look a little something like below:

On the top right of the screen there’s a little link “In English”, which you can use to set the locale for many things in the website.  Unfortunately, however, it doesn’t set the sign up process in English.  This doesn’t seem to be an option (at the time of writing).

Click this “In English” link and you’ll be presented with a simple page with a mixture of Japanese and English.

The next main step is to look at the top-middle of the page for the link highlight in the picture as “New User”.

Click this and you’ll be presented with the user login screen.  Please see the picture [2] on how to fill in the form with your own information.  All you need is an email address and you’re on to the the next stage.  Click the orange button to proceed.

If you can get past this stage, you’re then onto the most “difficult” part of the sign-up process.  You have to put in your name!

Take a look at picture [3] … it details all that you need.

The “hardest” part is going to be putting in Japanese text as Katakana for your name.  Note: You cannot have any spaces in the Japanese part.

Once you complete this step, you’re finished with registration and are a fully fledged member of Amazon JP.  There are other things you can do, such a registering a credit card, setting up your delivery address book etc., tracking orders… but it has a comprehensive English interface for this.  To get to your account management screen in the first place, look to the top right of the screen, within the blue banner header for text that reads:

アカウントサービス

Click this link and you’ll have an all-English account management interface (assuming you clicked “In English” in the steps above)

Happy shopping!

Tags: Amazon, amazon.co.jp, English, How-To, Japan