[Ylurien]

I took your advice Kicar and have been doing a bit of experimenting with japanese document creation. I think I`ve finally found an almost-perfect solution!

First, the process is pretty much as you say, but let me break it down again for the sake of people as new to the process as me:

1. I use Microsoft Word 2007 (I`m sure openoffice.org would work fine as well). You have to download a file called "saveaspdfandxps.exe" from Microsoft Office`s website to be able to save documents as PDF files, though.

2. Copy or type japanese text into a new word document. 24 or 26 point, MS Gothic (MS ゴシック) seems to be easiest to read. Japanese fonts don`t seem to scale well in size once they are on the reader (by hitting the "size" button), so make sure you choose a large enough size before you create the PDF. (Some of the more complex characters with multiple horizontal or vertical strokes don`t come out 100% clear on 24 point, but for veterans of japanese who can guess what the Kanji are and are not reading for study should go with 24. Also, I set the entire body of text to boldtype face to increase clarity.

3. Now you need to save the document. Go to "Save As / PDF" in the menu and be careful of one of the settings here: The options button just above the Publish button will allow you to unclick the "Bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded when saving". When I saved the file with this box ticked, copied the file to my reader and then tried to read it, my reader opened the file and then completely froze - something I hadn`t seen happen on my reader yet. I had to do a cold reset to get it working again as the power off/on switch did nothing after it froze. I`m not sure that the "Bitmap text..." option was the culprit, but it seems to be the only thing that could have caused it (as I`ve saved multiple documents since then and I have had no problems). Anyway, the box is checked by default so you`ll need to uncheck it every time.

4. Everything should be fine now so try opening up the file. You`ll likely notice that depending on the font size you used, turning pages will take more or less time. It appears that the SMALLER the font, the LONGER it takes to turn the page and load/close the document. With 18 pt. fonts, it took about 15 seconds to turn one page. With 26 pt. size it takes about 7 seconds. Does anyone know why it would be taking this long? I guess the reader`s CPU is just not equipped to decode a PDF file`s properties quickly.

Anyway, I`m really happy to be able to do this now! Everyone share your experiences here and maybe we can arrive at an even better way to accomplish this.