Obok cannot read special characters

[JSWolf]

I have a guess at what's going on. The kepub is using the access engine to render the Japanese eBooks. Maybe after removing the DRM, now the Japanese eBooks are being rendered with RMDSK (ADE)?

[tshering]

Originally Posted by AColobus

My Kobo turns out to have no Japanese font, only a very limited selection.

Touch and newer models have Japanese fonts with more recent firmwares (starting with 2.0.0 or so). The names of the fonts are Gothic and Ryumin. Do you have an older model?

Originally Posted by AColobus

I also inspected my existing Japanese content that (as mentioned above) was already displaying correctly. This turns out to be in html format, and presumably these are processed differently from epubs.

This seems to suggest that your device has at least one Japanese font installed. Or is the Japanese text of the htmls represented by images?

[AColobus]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

Obok 3.0.7 is the latest version and any newer version will be released via that Article. Should you need obok help or want to comment generally about obok then please use the posts below the Article.

Ah, okay. I was going only by JSWolf's comment.

Originally Posted by tshering

Touch and newer models have Japanese fonts with more recent firmwares (starting with 2.0.0 or so). The names of the fonts are Gothic and Ryumin. Do you have an older model?

This seems to suggest that your device has at least one Japanese font installed. Or is the Japanese text of the htmls represented by images?

Ah, I was not aware these were Japanese fonts; I haven't seen Gothic used with Japanese before, and apparently just didn't notice Ryumin. I suppose since the device didn't automatically select Japanese fonts, and nothing jumped out at me on the list, I assumed none were installed. I'm used to slightly more intelligent behaviour... my bad.

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

Yes, why not comment on the context of your problem here, and if necessary you can request a mod to change the title of the thread.

Great, okay. If necessary this post or this section can be moved elsewhere.

The problem is caused by moving to Japan while already owning a Kobo and using the Kobo service. Rakuten has recently bought Kobo, and has basically made a very slapdash job of integrating the service - they've done just enough to cause problems, but not enough to solve them.

From Japan, you cannot access international Kobo accounts - a forced redirect to Rakuten is applied. This means you cannot purchase books, nor access your existing library on the website. Kobo Desktop is unaffected.

However, you cannot use your Kobo account to log into Rakuten, even to use the Kobo-Rakuten ebooks platform. You must create a new Rakuten account. Once you start using ebooks, this behaves like a Kobo account. This means that although you can create a Rakuten account with any email address, you cannot use it to buy ebooks if it matches your Kobo email address. Problem one. This means you must, essentially, create two Kobo accounts, one just for Japan.

Unfortunately, you cannot link Kobo Desktop to multiple accounts. You must choose which to have active, and it will delete the other books from your computer and redownload the new ones, each time. You also cannot have both accounts active on a device, so it's impossible to have access to both your Japanese and (e.g.) UK books.

It's possible to ask Rakuten to merge your accounts, but this will run afoul of region restrictions. In theory you'd expect this to let you view all books, but in practice it will cut access. Essentially, you would choose one email address and assign all books to this. Depending which account (and therefore which country) the email is registered with, you will apparently lose access to any books that account is not permitted to buy. So if I merged to my Japanese account, I'd lose all my UK books. Obviously, this is not an acceptable option.

However, Rakuten (and as far as I can tell, all Japanese retailers) have very tight DRM practices. All seem to use proprietary apps exclusively, rather than standard ebook formats. This means using Calibre or similar is not an option as you cannot download even a DRMd ebook.

As such, your best bet is to retain two separate accounts, set your Kobo Desktop app to Japan, and use Obok to give you access to what you have actually bought. This should enable you to keep reading your books no matter which country you happen to be in - but backups will be essential, as there's no way to access your account from abroad. You can then read the books via a desktop epub reader, or transfer them manually to your ereader.

If you don't already have a Kobo account, you'll have no problems while in Japan, but a similar problem is likely to occur if you leave.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my non-Japanese account will once again work when I leave Japan - if not I'll update.

[Lynx-lynx]

@AColobus what a hassle for you!!

I have a number of Kobo accounts, (none in Japan), but my device uses a dummy account - that is an account that I don't ever sync to Kobo desktop, and never buys a book.

I only ever side load Calibre cleaned epubs onto my device, and don't use kepubs (which would only get onto the device if I synced it).

As soon as I buy a book (and after I've downloaded it into Sony Reader for PC) I import it into Calibre, so I never have to worry about having access to that ebook again. (Of course I keep backups of Calibre).

If I should happen to buy a kepub only ebook then I open Kobo Desktop for PC and sign in with the account that bought the book (which isn't the account that's on my Glo). I then use obok to import that ebook into Calibre and side load it to my device whenever.

For info, Canuck in Japan and a couple of other members who frequent this section also live in Japan and use their home country account as their primary account from memory. But they'll give you their tips and tricks I'm sure.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by AColobus

as there's no way to access your account from abroad.

Did you try tunneling your traffic via a proxy server?

[AColobus]

Originally Posted by tshering

Did you try tunneling your traffic via a proxy server?

I haven't, no. It seems likely this would work, but I can't say either way.

I wrote that on the guess that most people, like me, would not want to start fiddling with proxy servers, but this may be a misjudgement of the general reader. I wanted a fairly simple solution, whereas my impression of proxy servers (possibly inaccurate) is that you have to spend time researching trustworthy ones, setting them up, registration and so on, especially if you're doing financial transactions.

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

@AColobus what a hassle for you!!

I have a number of Kobo accounts, (none in Japan), but my device uses a dummy account - that is an account that I don't ever sync to Kobo desktop, and never buys a book.
...<and various other wisdom>

Luckily between a bit of googling for the general, and MobileRead for the specific, all was sorted in short order. Thanks again all.

Your solution sounds genius, and I wish I'd known about it earlier, but I began very naively thinking ereaders would be a nice, sensible technology, and had no thoughts of subterfuge. I might rethink my approach now though...

As a matter of curiosity, do you have a way to update the software without full sync, or do you just not worry about it?

I'm leaving the country shortly (which is the reason I was in a hurry to get it all working while I could), so probably don't need too many tips right now, but I might be back in the future. I'm basically just collecting stuff while I can still get Y500 ebooks that don't eat shelf space, rather than £10 hard copy imports, and didn't want to burn a load of money for nothing.

[Lynx-lynx]

Updating the Kobo firmware is easy peasy. You've probably noticed the thread about the new firmware release 3.12. Pop into that thread and you'll see that murg has posted the link to his Firmware updates thread up in the Kobo Developers Corner section. Just follow his instructions.

Also, it sounds like we need to introduce you to the Kobo Discounts thread. Have a look in the stickied section of the Deals and Freebies sub forum and you'll learn how to shop with Kobo using Discount vouchers around the world.

I can't link youi because I'm posting via phone.

Also you can change the account name on your device any time you want - but it will perform a factory reset so you'll need to reload your books after it.

[AColobus]

Thanks, those are all good! I found them easily.

Firmware is currently fine, but if I adopt your method (which I'm considering for when I'm not moving continent ) that thread will be very useful.

You're awesome, cheers.