Can you sign up for a Japanese NNID outside Japan? Can you be a part of Japanese Miiverse in America or Europe?

That question troubled me for quite a while. My 3DS was purchased in Japan and would only connect to the Japanese eShop. I heard rumors that if one signed up one would not be able to log in because one’s IP was in the wrong region.

That would have been disastrous for me since I am in a place where getting imports is very difficult and my 3DSLL will not play non-Japanese games, physical or digital. So If I lost eShop access I would be up the proverbial gum-tree without a paddle.

It was particularly annoying as, with the introduction of NNIDs to 3DS, Nintendo cut off access to free e-Shop items (such as demos and apps like the children’s ebook reader Honto) for recalcitrant customers who did not register NNIDs.

I did a lot of asking around (there is very little on the subject on the internet). In the end I felt as sure as I was going to get that it was safe and took the plunge.

And I can assure you all that it is safe. I now have a Japan-based NNID. Officially I am in Japan.

(Please note: I cannot confirm that this will work with WiiU).

You actually can choose other countries in the region, I think, so if you wanted to be Korean you could (possibly useful for excusing one’s poor Japanese without making people think one speaks English. However since you want to be working in Japanese I would reccomend sticking to Japan). You can also choose your prefecture. I chose Aichi, which is where I was when I first got the 3DS, and therefore the one the machine was already set to.

Beware though – your initial choices will be locked forever. Not your privacy settings and so forth, but things like your country can never be changed. And your user name can never be changed, so choose it carefully! If you delete your account you will lose all your digital games, so you are really locked into your initial choice.

Fortunately your display name is the name of your Mii and you can still change that at will. But when people view your profile, your user name will always be there.

You also get the choice of setting Miiverse to show worldwide posts or posts for your language only. I set mine to Japanese only. Partly because when I am fooling with Miiverse I also want to be learning. Partly because I really don’t need a lot of clutter from languages I don’t know or am not trying to improve. Partly because there is far too much English-language trivia around anyway. I really don’t need more (and I probably see less than most people!) You can change this setting after sign-up, by the way.

More importantly, in relation to the Japanese-learning methods advocated by this site, it is important to set up as many Japanese-only environments for yourself as possible and Miiverse gives a golden opportunity for a new one.

Another important setting that I don’t see a chance to change later is whether you want to connect to Miiverse via PC etc. You do. You definitely do. There is absolutely nothing to lose here as you don’t need to use it if you don’t want to. But you will want to.

If you choose “yes”, you can access the whole of Miiverse via your PC and other web-enabled devices. This means that you can use Rikaichan while browsing posts and writing replies, which is invaluable. Not while making original posts though as this can only be done from your 3DS while playing the game – which restricts original posts on a game to people who own and play it.

You can also access your screenshots posted via your 3DS on the Web version of Miiverse. This finally solves the age-old problem of getting decent screen-shots from a DS as you can then copy and use these (you actually can’t download them in the regular manner but there are obvious ways around that).

So – good luck with Miiverse. See you there!

(I am kinokononingyou by the way!)