By Thomas Fals onGuide Highlights
- In order to unblock a US only service you need to use a VPN Connection such as Hide My Ass
- Lastly you need to sign up for Netflix. Simply connect to the VPN server in the US and then use a 5 digit zip code once you need to enter your credit card info.
Ok so here is the deal. If you want to watch Netflix from Japan you need to jump trough a few hoops, but it is actually very easy to do. Read along and you will have Netflix unblocked in minutes.
See like so many other web services Netflix is available to citizens in the US only. This has to do with licensing agreements and other boring things. When you try to sign up for Netflix or try to stream from an existing account while located in Japan you will be blocked.
Netflix will take a look at your devices IP-address in order to determine where in the world you are located. If you don’t know what an IP-address is fear not – all you need to know is that it is a number issued to you via your internet connection and all devices need this in order to get online. What we need to do is obtain an American based IP-address and then we can stream Netflix from Japan.
How to get US Netflix in Japan
So far so good – now to the actual workaround. In order to obtain an American IP-address we need to connect to something called a Virtual Private Network or VPN for short. By doing 
this we will connect to a server in the US that will act as a middle man between us and Netflix and thus allow us to stream Netflix in Japan. It is actually that simple.
Find a VPN Provider to Watch Netflix in Japan
There are several providers on the market, but since video streaming requires good bandwidth only a few seem to provide the speeds needed. I tried quite different ones in my search for the best quality and I ended up with Hide My Ass VPN as they gave me the best quality streams by far. The setup was really easy as all you have to do is install their application and select where in the world you want to hide (USA in our case) and then connect. That is all there is to it and now Netflix will think you are in the US and allow you to both sign up for the free trial and stream. If you are not connected with the VPN first, then the last step of the sign up will fail – now you know.
So that is basically all there is to it – and this will of course work for unblocking more than Netflix in Japan. All the other US only services will be unblocked by this trick too.