Access Forbidden Japanese Pages on SAVEDATA.JP and Other Sites

There has been a bit of an online thing in Japan recently, where websites are cracking down on who actually gets to view their content—preferably only their own species. Why is that, you ask? Well, imagine you created a website in English for English speaking audiences, then along comes a bunch of foreigners from another country who generate content on your site in a different language you and your audience doesn't understand. You wouldn't like that too much, right?

So hence, if you try to visit a few Japanese sites/pages recently and discovered you are unable to access them due to errors (e.g. Forbidden Access), then you are most likely purposely locked out due to your location not being in Japan.

The most recent example of this is on SAVEDATA.JP. I already detailed what this site is about and why it is useful here. However, they have begun to make all their save codes (セーブエディット) section available only to people living in Japan. So if you try to access these pages outside of Japan, you'll be now greeted to the following:

Red text translate to: You do not have permission to access.

Here is an easy way to get around this, and no, you do not have to move to Japan or any other country.

All you really have to do is to switch to use a proxy address. Proxies not only help you retain anonymity over the internet, but it additionally solves the issue of blocked/forbidden websites and pages, even ones set up by the server/network you are currently using.

But the above page will not just work with any proxy. You specifically need to use a proxy that is located in Japan. By doing such, you are basically masking yourself to the internet as coming directly from Japan instead of where you are currently.

So where do you get a Japanese proxy address? That's easy, just Google "Japan proxy" and you'll get sites offering free Japanese proxies. Here is one that I've actually used myself. Here is another one.

Most proxy lists should indicate the proxy IP (proxy address), port, speed, level of anonymity and country it comes from.

In order to browse the internet with at least decent speeds, you should select a proxy that has the highest speed. Not all proxy addresses also work, so you may have to end up trying multiple ones until you come upon one that does the trick.

So looking at the above proxy list, I would first select 179.60.241.173, copy it to the clipboard and keep the 8080 port number in mind (as I'll be needing to input it later onwards).

Do not simply copy and use this proxy address I'm using or refer to the screenshot I posted for addresses. Proxies change all the time, so you most likely won't be able to continuously use the same ones for an infinite amount of time.

Let's briefly go over how to actually switch to a proxy address in your internet browser settings. All browsers will be different, but in general they should all give you adjustable proxy settings.

In Firefox, proxy options are located under browser options/preferences in Advanced -> Network -> Connection -> Settings.

After clicking "Manual proxy configuration", you need to enter the proxy address you copied previously and paste it into the "HTTP Proxy" number field. Additionally, input the port number tied to that proxy address into the "Port" field. Leave everything else unchanged and save the changes.

In Chrome, proxy settings can be changed by going to Settings -> Show Advanced Settings -> Network -> Change Proxy Settings. The steps should then be the same as Firefox above.

After changing the proxy, you can then test the page that you couldn't access earlier by simply reloading or going to the address again. If you cannot get the page to load or you are still getting error messages, you should go on to try the next proxy address.

So after doing that, I was able to access SAVEDATA.JP's save codes pages again!

Now that you know how proxies work, you can use it to your advantage in other ways, and I do mean not strictly for Japanese web content exclusively.