Become a Fan of Japanese Music

Posted on January 23, 2008
Filed Under Internet, Music, Technology |

Have you ever been interested in Japanese music? Do you have a kid in the family who loves anime? Are you looking for a new way of learning Japanese? If the answer to one of these questions is yes than you might be interested in using iTunes to buy Japanese music. Your regular iTunes store doesn’t offer their Japanese selection so you have to find a new way of accessing the store. The folks at JBox.com have done just that. Now you don’t need a Japanese address and credit card to setup Japanese iTunes account. All you need is a prepaid Japanese iTunes card. JBox.com even has instructions to walk you through the process.

Load iTunes on your Mac or PC. If you don’t have it yet, download it from Apple.

If you’ve already got an account in your home country, sign out by clicking on the Account button in the upper left hand corner, then Sign Out.

At the bottom of the iTunes Music Store window, choose the Japan Store. The name may appear in kanji, but it’s easy to find.

Click the Redeem button along the right side of the iTMS, and enter the scratch-off Redeem Code printed on the back of the card when asked.

iTunes will show you a dialog box asking for your current account. Since we’re making a new iTMS account for the Japan store, click Create Account.

Follow the steps to create a new account, first agreeing to the iTunes agreement (step 1 of 3), then entering email, birthdate and vertification question (step 2).Important: When signing up for an iTunes account with a pre-paid card, some customers have reported that iTMS won’t let you proceed without entering a credit card. In order to bypass this, hit the “Home” button and begin the Redeem process again, and you’ll see the “None” button the second time through. This is a known issue that affects Japanese users in Japan as well.

At step 3, where you are asked for your (Japanese) address. You can enter any address you like. Note that you must enter your name twice, once for “kanji” and once for “pronunciation” (but you can enter the same information into both fields). You can do this in English or any language that’s supported by iTunes — the ability to read Japanese is never required for the iTunes Japan Store — so for the phonetic spelling you can just enter the same normal English characters as the other ‘name’ fields.

Enjoy purchasing great music and audio content directly from Japan in the Japan iTunes Music Store! Now that you have an account tied to a prepaid card, you can get full access to the “Free iTunes Single of the Week” from Japan, and future prepaid card credit can be added to your existing account.

Can you think of an easier way to explore Japanese music than through apple’s robust iTunes catalog?