Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary (English and Japanese Edition)

The book is really helpful when trying to figure out what somethings mean for beginners.
there are things that are in the dictionary but it's really nice. it also has English to Japanese at the back.

Did not find the dictionary particularly helpful as there are usually several romanizations of a particular Japanese word, and the dictionary only has one so unless it is exactly like the romanization in the dictionary, there will be no entry in the dictionary. The author should have listed the other romanizations with the one the author picked so you could find your definition. The first ten words I looked up were common Japanese words but did not show up in the dictionary so I returned the book.

Came in perfect edition, came on time, this was one i needed for my jap class, wouldve bought a hardcover but couldent find it, oh well. Overall great. This dictionary is very clear and awesome. Easy to find japanese words(in romanji. Exp: watashi) and words in english words to japanese.

I bought this for my daughter's secondary school work. While we've not had it for very long, and therefore this review is somewhat premature - it is, after all, a reference book - it has so far done what we expected it to do.

A very well-written abridged Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary by Random House. I used to have the paper-back version a long time ago, and lost it. This hard-back cover is a whole lot better! It has helped immensely to look-up many Japanese and English words for their counter-parts as I am learning the Japanese language.

As a beginner to the Japanese language, this dictionary raised more questions than it answered; for instance, there are no clear answers as to counting numbers, no clear directions as to proper Japanese grammar, and there seems to many omissions both in the Japanese-English and English-Japanese sections; there also seems to contain many word combinations that are oxymorons-I never would have guessed that the traditional Japanse language included words for wine cellar...as a companion reference for someone taking a Japanese language course, I'm sure it would be adequate, but for a rank beginner like myself, I wouldn't recommend it.

This dictionary works great one way, but beginners may find the other way challenging or frustrating. Those wanting to look up Japanese translations of English words will have no trouble doing so in the book's excellent "English-Japanese" section. This section includes Japanese characters (Kanji, Kana or both) as well as transliterations of the Japanese for each word. For example, the passage for "Movie" contains a transliteration using English characters, "eiga," and then the Kanji characters that make up the word, "映画." So the correct pronunciation and characters conveniently appear side by side without too much supplemental information that may confuse or overwhelm beginners. This works perfectly and effortlessly.

In contrast, the Japanese-English section evokes an old George Carlin routine where he complains to a teacher that he doesn't know how to spell a word. The teacher barks back: "You don't know how to spell it? Well look it up in the dictionary!" Carlin responds: "There's one problem with this... you have to know how to spell a word to look it up in the dictionary!" Those with little or no experience with Kanji will face a similar situation. Seeing a word made up of Kanji in a book or online begs the question "how is it pronounced?" But to find a word using Kanji in the Japanese-English section of the dictionary, especially those words beginning with Kanji, requires knowing the pronunciation of those characters, because this section of the dictionary is ordered alphabetically by sound. Those who know the basic pronunciations of Kanji will have no problem, of course. But beginners will likely find the Japanese-English section overwhelming, unless a word consists entirely of Kana or the Kanji includes furigana. As such determining the pronunciation of Kanji often requires additional tools, such as a Kanji chart that includes stroke count or radicals (for example, the book "Kanji & Kana"). Not only that, many Kanji have multiple pronunciations, so which one to choose? Sometimes determining the proper translation necessitates a small research project.

The above of course applies to nearly any Japanese-English dictionary, but beginners should be aware of the challenges ahead. To translate from Japanese to English often requires more than a dictionary - except for those who already possess extensive Kanji knowledge. Regardless, this dictionary still serves as a great beginner's dictionary and will likely help further one's knowledge of the Japanese language, not to mention reveal some of its true difficulties.

An excellent dictionary! I have looked EVERYWHERE for a good Japanese to English, English to Japanese dictionary. Unfortunately, Japanese is one of those languages where an adequate bilingual dictionary is a difficult thing to find. Either it will be a phrase book, a small pocket book with far too few entries and thus holes in your vocabulary, or a huge kanji dictionary which are usually very cumbersome and difficult to use. This dictionary is the absolute best of any Japanese dictionary out there. It has a large vocabulary, covering nearly every word you’ll ever use in either English or Japanese. In addition, it gives kanji, and hiragana/katakana as well as Romaji for those who don’t know those systems yet. It is simple to use, and extremely well done. I can’t give it enough praise! My only complaint is that I wish it had even more vocabulary but at 50,000 entries it’s the largest dictionary out there until someone makes an even larger one!

I find this dictionary useful for reading haiku when combined with a basic Oxford Japanese-English dictionary which offers more idiomatic expressions.

This Random House usually offers a sufficient number of cognates. The romaji (roman characters) are given with macron for long vowels ('ta and instead of otta) which is a plus.

Regardless, I often turn to another book of idioms and, when I can find an internet resource with both kana and Kanji, I drop the Kanji into Google translate.

I wish the covers were of more solid cardstock as this is an item for constant use: I have already reinforced the front cover from inside.

The Oxford has kana on the inside of the front cover - in this dictionary they are on page 19 (the inside of the back cover is where you might put them - on card stock glued in to reinforce that cover.

Mark the page ends to give yourself a guide for thumbs into the dictionary - the back of the page marking the English section is blank, so you could glue in a page to help mark that natural division.

The cover is lovely, but I wish it were useful - the Kanji for the Ku in KURU,for example.

The Japanese section has no On or Kun Yomi for the Kanji - the Oxford supplements there, but the true complements, in my case, are my various Kanji exercise books.

Beware: there is another Random House J-E/E-J on cheap pulp paper and otherwise poor.

After only a few years, the entire binding is coming apart -- it is almost split in two halves! (F.Y.I., I bought it brand-new.) One page started coming out the first couple months I had it. This is the reason for the lukewarm review.

As a reference, it is great, though not perfect. It has an excellent number of entries, and many entries in the English-Japanese section also give answers for related phrases and a mixture of usages. It also provides answers in various parts of speech, where applicable (adjective, adverb, verb, etc). For examples, it doesn't give entire sentences as in Kodansha's, rather an excerpt just long enough -- this is good because giving many entire sentences wastes space.

However, even though it was published in 1997, after the World Wide Web caught on fire, it doesn't show terms like link, click (verb), email, and webpage (so I didn't know how to properly write the adopted word "e-mail" phonetically in katakana until I got the Langenscheidt dictionary). It is very out-of-date with things like that. This is my other big gripe.

Sometimes words in the English-Japanese section are not in the Japanese-English section, but this doesn't happen too often. Sometimes I can't find a particular usage. Particles are defined in both sections. A minor gripe is the Japanese-English section is alphabetized per English rules, not Japanese rules, and also I would like to see the romaji gone completely from both sections (or at least an alternate version).

This book badly needs to be updated. Because of that and most especially the terrible quality of the binding, I would give it only 2 stars -- except it has more entries than Kodansha's Furigana Dictionary.

I very much *want* a "furigana" dictionary, but read this comparison. Random House's has 666 pages and over 50,000 entries -- Kodansha's with a whopping 1200+ pages, has *only 30,000* entries! They waste paper on larger print (which some people will like), but also waste *tons* of paper by writing out *entire sentences* where there is *no need*. I mean they don't write out sentences just to clarify weird usage, they just do them where not needed as a matter of course! It's supposed to be a dictionary, not a grammar book.

It's very frustrating because I want a "furigana" or "kana" dictionary, but there's none out there! (Oxford puts out a dictionary with *no* pronunciation *at all* -- neither kana nor romaji -- how crazy is that??? You can write something but you can't say it!)

It's a sad situation when the "best" book only rates 3 stars -- but that's the way it is. I can't understand why Random House hasn't updated their dictionary for the 21st century, not to mention fix the very poor binding. However, honestly, this dictionary is the "best" you can do right now if you are serious about expanding your vocabulary.

You just can't win!

This is a perfect dictionary for those who have no experience with the Japanese "alphabets;" it uses Romanized Japanese, and next to each word features the kanji/kana used in its purely Japanese counterpart. It has a pretty decent word-count and I still use it every now and then if a word proves elusive.

However, after I became acquainted with the kana, I found this text a bit annoying. It's easier to misspell the kana version of a word when you're using the Romanized Japanese. The kanji has no furigana; yes, some of them are self-explanatory, but certainly not all. And if you're just starting out with kanji, you're usually not sure which syllable goes where, so it's actually a little bit annoying until you gain more experience. Another negative note: this dictionary is easy to use as a crutch in order to avoid those scary kana -- and of course, learning the kana is the most useful thing you can do!

I think it's a pretty valuable resource, and I am certainly not sorry I bought it. Beginners should find it a breath of fresh air. However, an intermediate or higher level Japanese-language student will find this book more of a hindrance than a help. If you fall into that beginner category, and are a serious student of the language, I encourage you to take the dive into kana... it's way more useful in the long run!

Unfortunately, where dictionaries are concerned there are very few offerings available for the English student of Japanese. Many of the larger ones are designed with the Japanese learner of English in mind.
This dictioanry is probably the best one you will find if you are learning Japanese, and it is certainly very good value for money! I bought my copy about 6 years ago, and it has been used so often it is literally falling apart. I have lived in Japan for several years, and this dictioanry has, so far, fulfilled most of my needs, moreso than the Kodansha Basic Dictionary, which fails to provide a lot of words, but does maintain a phraseological approach that this Random House dictionary is sadly lacking. If you are looking for idiomatic usage of an English phrase in Japanese, you will proabably find that the equivalent of what you are looking for is not available in the English to Japanese section, so you will have to make do with a similar, but maybe less colouful way of expressing yourself, or buy and idiom book, and there are some good ones out there.
Still, all in all, you will be getting your money's worth with this, especially for understanding Japanese, but you may find it less useful when you want to express yourself in Japanese and look to this as a guide.

Nakao Seigo-san's waei/eiwa, or Japanese-English/English Japanese dictionary, is a nice-sized quality paperback with enough entries, more than a pocket-sized edition, but nothing ultimate like the legendary Green Giant by Kenkyusha.

The English-Japanese entries have the translations in romaji (written in Latin alphabet) as well as the kana and where appropriate, kanji translations. They also cover homophones, such as bridge (for crossing) and the card game.

However, for those not versed in Japanese, the guide preceding the Japanese-English section is imperative reading, as it covers basic grammatical nuances and rules in Japanese. Regarding words borrowed from English, for example, one might observe how most Japanese words end in a vowel sound, hence Christmas is pronounced "kurisumasu," plastic is pronounced "purasuchikku." Then there are the copular nouns, or "keiyoudoushi" that accompany some adjectives. For example, "an elderly person" would be "toshiyori no hito." "Toshiyori" is elderly, "hito" is "person," which makes the copular noun "no."

There are also some verbs whose infinitives include "suru," which is kind of like "do." For example, "emancipate" is "kaihou suru." Others don't, like "to reside," which is "sumu."

I wore out my copy of this during my 72 day trip to Japan, and boy did it come in handy. This time, for my upcoming stay in Japan, I will treat my new copy much better.

One November day last year, I was browsing around in a local book shop, and found this book in the languages section. Being interested in all things Japanese, I bought it.
What a good purchase it turned out to be. For a small dictionary, it has a surprisingly large number of words and definitions. It also gives multiple words for a single english word (ex. ours = watashitachi no mono, ware-ware no mono), so the two Japanese words can later be looked up in the Japanese section for a prescise meaning.
Another excellent feature is the 15- page dictionary guide, which provides a detailed explanation of pronounciation, plus a complete chart of romaji/hiragana/katakana characters.
My only gripe is that for a dictionary this comprehensive, it didn't include a phrasebook. Nevertheless, this is still a great dictionary, especially for those new to the Japanese language.

As a beginner student of Japanese, I found this dictionary to be invaluable. All the listings are in romanji so they're easy to find, but there's also a japanese (kanji) translation as well incase you want to know how it's written in true japanese. It offers about everything a beginner-intermediate learner can ask for. If your serious about learning japanese from scratch, read no further and pick it up right now! It'll be the best 10 bucks you'll ever invest for your japanese.
I was reading the previous review about how horrible the japanese section was. I completely disagree with this. I have no idea what kind of words he was looking up. For me, I still believe that both sections were well done. It is normal for the english-japanese section to be larger for English usually has a larger more comprehensive vocabulary than most if not all east asian languages? Well, I know it applies for Thai. ^_^ I'm also a manga and anime maniac so I regularly use it to translate what I hear or read, and so far it has passed every test every word I've looked up, save for a few rare extreme insults. (this is assumed that you know how to conjugate japanese verbs, because the dictionary lists them in their standard form or similar to the english indefinite form: "iku" meaning to go, can be said as ikimasu, iko, itte, etc., so you'll need to recognize these when translating japanese to english.) I've compared this dictionary to many others in its class and none compare to its comprehensiveness and clean layout. It also includes a little explanation about Japanese grammer and also has a table of jap syllables in hiragana, katakana, and romanji. You can compare the listings in the exerpts available on the store.com for yourself if you want.
I don't think that hinder your learning of hiragana/katagana like some people may say. Because they are actually pretty easy to remember, and since hiragana/katagana translates into english romanji letters EXACTLY!, you can make no mistake. Oh! I nearly forgot to mention that it also contains phrases that adds to its general handiness. Actually, it amazed me many times by having the exact phrase I was looking for even when I didn't expect for it from a dictionary. Generally, if you just need to translate ordinary words used in everyday life, this book is definitely for you. I'm even also planning to buy a more permanent hardcover copy soon, because I've used mines so much so often that the cover and pages are getting a little worn out.

This dictionary is of a respectable size, similar to collegiate dictionaries I've used. The paper has a nice quality and the text is easy to read. It's very handy translating to or from Japanese, but the word pool is not what I'd call complete. For one, I think that there should be more phrases listed as entries instead of buried within descriptions of words that make up those phrases. For another, the dictionary entries it does contain seem almost random at times and skip over a lot of commonly used words (In both languages!)

It's a good utility reference for the price, and certainly something you could shove in a backpack for class. But in a crunch, it has let me down many times and I've had to hit electronic romaji references online to complete translations that I believe common enough for any dictionary.

What can I say about this dictionary? I think it's good for beginners and intermediate students. It's a thick, desk reference-type book that's a bit hard to carry around, but that can be good because it has a lot of entries. Also, it has both J>E and E>J, which is nice, and it put the kanji form of the word within the definition, which is great.

Two things I don't like about it, though: it uses romanization for J>E, which requires that you first romanize a word in order to look it up. I prefer to have Japanese-style ordering so I can practice better.

Second, I think the print is too big. They could have made a smaller book if they'd scrunched the text a bit more. Just as many words, and fewer pages.

As a Japanese language student, I found this dictionary to be a very useful tool in the beginning stages of learning Japanese. Most likely, the beginning student will learn to associate Japanese phrases with their respective Romanizations instead of thinking in Japanese script. For this reason, this dictionary is a good tool to help transition students from thinking in romanji to the respective Japanese scripts (hiragana, katakana and kanji).
I have found this dictionary quite useful when I studied the Japanese language during my first year in high school. However, after I began associating Japanese phrases and words with hiragana, I began using a dictionary that allowed me to search words in the hiragana script (a,i,u,e,o,ka,ki,ku...ra,wa,wo). It was difficult to go back to this Romanized dictionary.
As this dictionary is not exclusively Japanese to English or English to Japanese, this dictionary compromises its comprehensiveness. I have found that this dictionary doesn't include many more advanced or classical Japanese words and phrases that may be found in Japanese newspapers or official documents.
Yet, if you are a beginning Japanese student without any experience with Japanese script, this is a good start. However, if you are student who has more experience with the script, a better recommendation might be Kodansha's Furigana Japanese-English Dictionary or Kodansha's Furigana English-Japanese Dictionary.

I bought this dictionary because it was reasonably priced and seemed fairly decent when I flipped through it at the bookstore. However, I second the reviewer who said its best use is a doorstop. I've found that more often than not, when I go to look up a word, it's nowhere to be found. I've come to rely on internet dictionaries more than this book, unfortunately.
A beginner to the language might find this somewhat useful, as well as anyone who gets confused by kana dictionaries (where the 'alphabetical order' isn't the same as English), but overall, I'd recommend saving your pennies and getting a decent electronic kanji/E-J/J-E dictionary.

Novices and more advanced students and speakers of Japanese alike will find this a very handy reference to have on hand. Broken into two halves--one an English to Japanese dictionary and the other the reverse--the book allows students to easily locate whatever word they need.
The one "fault" is that the Japanese-English portion is in Romaji, or the English-letter representation of Japanese sounds, which can make locating some words difficult for a couple of reasons--first, readers may not know the pronounciation of a given word in kanji (which other books better address anyway); and second, Romanization methods differ, yielding some confusion over the proper "spelling" of a given word. Still, a student with some knowledge of grammar should be able to look up spoken, Romanized, or kana-ized words without much difficulty.

This is by far my favorite dictionary for Japanese. And believe me, I went through several trying to find one I liked. The Romanji and Kanji definitions are exactly what I needed as a beginner and now, as an intermediate student, they still prove very useful. I use this everyday.

I would also recommend The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary as a nice compliment to this dictionary. If you're using Japanese in a business environment, I might suggest Cassell's English-Japanese Business Dictionary which may be hard to find but is a good permanent piece for your reference collection.

This dictionary is of a respectable size, similar to collegiate dictionaries I've used. The paper has a nice quality and the text is easy to read. It's very handy translating to or from Japanese, but the word pool is not what I'd call complete. For one, I think that there should be more phrases listed as entries instead of buried within descriptions of words that make up those phrases. For another, the dictionary entries it does contain seem almost random at times and skip over a lot of commonly used words (In both languages!)

It's a good utility reference for the price, and certainly something you could shove in a backpack for class. But in a crunch, it has let me down many times and I've had to hit electronic romaji references online to complete translations that I believe common enough for any dictionary.

What can I say about this dictionary? I think it's good for beginners and intermediate students. It's a thick, desk reference-type book that's a bit hard to carry around, but that can be good because it has a lot of entries. Also, it has both J>E and E>J, which is nice, and it put the kanji form of the word within the definition, which is great.

Two things I don't like about it, though: it uses romanization for J>E, which requires that you first romanize a word in order to look it up. I prefer to have Japanese-style ordering so I can practice better.

Second, I think the print is too big. They could have made a smaller book if they'd scrunched the text a bit more. Just as many words, and fewer pages.

As a Japanese language student, I found this dictionary to be a very useful tool in the beginning stages of learning Japanese. Most likely, the beginning student will learn to associate Japanese phrases with their respective Romanizations instead of thinking in Japanese script. For this reason, this dictionary is a good tool to help transition students from thinking in romanji to the respective Japanese scripts (hiragana, katakana and kanji).
I have found this dictionary quite useful when I studied the Japanese language during my first year in high school. However, after I began associating Japanese phrases and words with hiragana, I began using a dictionary that allowed me to search words in the hiragana script (a,i,u,e,o,ka,ki,ku...ra,wa,wo). It was difficult to go back to this Romanized dictionary.
As this dictionary is not exclusively Japanese to English or English to Japanese, this dictionary compromises its comprehensiveness. I have found that this dictionary doesn't include many more advanced or classical Japanese words and phrases that may be found in Japanese newspapers or official documents.
Yet, if you are a beginning Japanese student without any experience with Japanese script, this is a good start. However, if you are student who has more experience with the script, a better recommendation might be Kodansha's Furigana Japanese-English Dictionary or Kodansha's Furigana English-Japanese Dictionary.

I bought this dictionary because it was reasonably priced and seemed fairly decent when I flipped through it at the bookstore. However, I second the reviewer who said its best use is a doorstop. I've found that more often than not, when I go to look up a word, it's nowhere to be found. I've come to rely on internet dictionaries more than this book, unfortunately.
A beginner to the language might find this somewhat useful, as well as anyone who gets confused by kana dictionaries (where the 'alphabetical order' isn't the same as English), but overall, I'd recommend saving your pennies and getting a decent electronic kanji/E-J/J-E dictionary.

Novices and more advanced students and speakers of Japanese alike will find this a very handy reference to have on hand. Broken into two halves--one an English to Japanese dictionary and the other the reverse--the book allows students to easily locate whatever word they need.
The one "fault" is that the Japanese-English portion is in Romaji, or the English-letter representation of Japanese sounds, which can make locating some words difficult for a couple of reasons--first, readers may not know the pronounciation of a given word in kanji (which other books better address anyway); and second, Romanization methods differ, yielding some confusion over the proper "spelling" of a given word. Still, a student with some knowledge of grammar should be able to look up spoken, Romanized, or kana-ized words without much difficulty.

This is by far my favorite dictionary for Japanese. And believe me, I went through several trying to find one I liked. The Romanji and Kanji definitions are exactly what I needed as a beginner and now, as an intermediate student, they still prove very useful. I use this everyday.

I would also recommend The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary as a nice compliment to this dictionary. If you're using Japanese in a business environment, I might suggest Cassell's English-Japanese Business Dictionary which may be hard to find but is a good permanent piece for your reference collection.

I'm trying to teach myself Japanese, and this book has been a great companion. It conatains almost everyword I ever needed to look up. This won't teach you much about grammar, but it makes a great suppliment.
The dictionary is completely in roomaji, so it requires no knowledge of kana or kanji. It does have the Japanese script for the word listed after it, though.
I got my copy from a second hand book store, and it fell apart at the spine after a few month, which is the danger of a thick-spined book. I have no idea how old the actual copy was, though, or how roughly its previous owners had treated it.

I bought this book at Barnes and Nobles its helpfull for looking up English words translated to japanese But I have being reading the original japanese sailor moon manga and a lot of the words I was looking up to understand the story where not in the dictionary.

I first bought this dictionary for my univeristy course, it's small in size and cheap so I thought it would serve as a basic tool for word searching. But then, when I went to Japan, I found that this small dictionary is far from basic, I was particularly impressed when my Japanese friends failed to find words on their expensive electronic Japanese/English> Enlgish/Japanese dictionaries, whereas I could using my old fashioned paper dictionary! I would highly recommend this to any beginners. Not only was I impressed by the comprehensive word bank size, but also, it gives romaji, kana and kanji (where appropriate) in all word entries. I wouldn't even think of leaving the house without this when I first arrived in Japan!

Overall I think this is one of the better dictionaries on the market. I've used it to translate things back and forth for my college level Japanese class and only recently have I started to notice some things that might bother me from time to time.

1. As some reviews have mentioned the English-Japanese section is more in-depth than the Japanese to English. I wish this were better mirrored. For example the other day I came across the word mizutamari - I went to look it up but it wasn't in the Japanese to English side. Thanks to the kanji and an accompanying picture I went and looked up puddle in the English-Japanese side. It was there. Now why wouldn't the author just make his dictionary a little thicker and mirror the words better?

2. I wish that this would specify what type of verb it is - some of them are obvious but it'd be nice to note that a verb is a u or an ru in some cases.

Other than that the dictionary is pretty nice - it gives the words in kanji after the romanji or hiragana version, it's easy to use, the Japanese side goes by our English alphabetical order,the dictionary includes phrases and different ways to use words, and overall it is pretty thorough. But if you want to translate primarily Japanese back to English there should be a better dictionary for you.

This is a dictionary of English-Japanese and Japanese-English translations. I like it because it includes the Japanese characters as well as the Romanized versions. There is a very quick introduction to pronounciation in the first few pages, but no grammar or conjugation hints, so you are better off getting Japanese for Dummies with the CD and Japanese Phrases for Dummies to help out in that area. This would be useful for a student using it for translation work.

While there is no substitute for a good electronic dictionary, in terms of amount of vocabulary and compact convenience, this is probably the best paper Japanese/English English/Japanese dictionary available.
It is very easy to use, and contains most of the vocabulary needed for day to day interactions. It is too large to be easily portable, and so is more of a desk reference than an on-the-move book.
The only drawback is that the Japanese/English portion of the book catalogs words using romajii, instead of hiragana or katakana. The overall impact on this is laziness to those trying to learn Japanese. Gaining speed in kana is essential, and using a romanized dictionary will not help progress. The kanji is available for Japanese words, but are usually of small type.

I bought this book before my first trip to Japan, almost 4 years ago now. At the time I had just begun to really learn the language and took it with me for reference. Unfortunately, even at that point I found little use in it, the vocabulary in my experience tended to be lacking. The fact the Japanese section is both in romanji and in alphabetical order made it very counter-intuitive to use so it was quickly thrown to the side and forgotten.

As other reviewers have stated, nothing can beat an electronic dictionary these days, however people still looking for a print-and-bound dictionary or a cheaper alternative to purchasing a $200-300 piece of equipment would do well to look elsewhere. This one comes across as outdated and anyone who can read kana and kanji will soon find it become a hindrance. Beginners in Japanese need to learn hiragana and katakana immediately, which puts them outside the limited scope of this dictionary, and more advanced learners will find it easier to cross-reference entries written in Japanese text or consult with a more specific kanji or vocabulary reference text.

I often used this book throughout my high school and undergraduate education. It's easy to use, and contains everything you need to know early on. If you're in years 1 or 2 it's just right. Even in later years the English to Japanese section is extremely helpful, myself often using it in 400 level Eng-Jpn translation courses. When you get more advanced in the language you will pick up a more complex dictionary written in Japanese anyway, but for your early years this is the best you're going to find. I have my BA in Japanese Language and lit, highly recommended.

My Japanese teacher recommended that I purchase this reference. I honestly didn't really use it as much because I found the website jisho.org and it turned out to be a lot more useful for me. I also didn't like how one word would be in the Japanese-English section, but then it wouldn't be in the English-Japanese section. It made me wonder what kind of protocol they use when compiling the book. This is definitely not the only reference you'll ever need..

This is a very basic Japanese-English dictionary that should be avoided by any intermediate-or-better learners. There are dicitonaries out there which have so many more words in them that this one is just kind of superfluous. Its simplicity may make it useful for beginning language students, but people who have been at it for a while should avoid it.

Ivan Rorick

This dictionary is light-weight and easy to carry around Japan to help the intermediate student stutter through general conversation. However, this convenience comes at a price: not only does it bypass less common words, but it has the infuriating habit of omitting some entries in the Japanese-English section only to have them as the most basic definition in the English-Japanese area. If you're doing any real studying, I recommend you try another dictionary.