Hello everyone !
I don’t know if my topic is off, so sorry if it is.
I read here and there that Smartnews is a very good app to improve reading skills.
I would love to try it but I live in France and it is not useable in my country.
Do you know if there is a way to use it anyway ? Do I have to use a VPN ?
Thank you in advance for your answers !
Sorry I don’t know about your specific question, but just to say that you can hopefully access the NHK Easy news website, as well as many other news outlets and articles in Japanese elsewhere too:
You shouldn’t need a VPN to access Smartnews. I can download it through my American App Store. Once you have the app installed, you’ll go into settings and change your region to Japan (it should be at the top). On ios you can also change the app’s specific language (interface) to Japanese in system settings, I’m not sure about Android though.
edit: just read what you said about the French app store. You’ll probably need to make an account in a different region and then download the app through that account. At least for Apple, you don’t need a VPN to create an account in a different region. It might be a good idea to make a Japanese account if you want to download other Japanese apps, otherwise, US will work for smartnews.
Thanks I will try this 
I will try to create a different account in japanese, thanks for the tips 