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Elizabeth recommends the following dictionary:

Kodansha's Furigana Dictionary: Japanese-English/English-Japanese

For anyone looking to buy a reliable and useful Japanese/English dictionary, I would recommend Kodansha’s ‘Furigana’ Dictionary (furigana are the little kana written above kanji to indicate pronunciation).

This was the first dictionary I ever bought, and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone studying Japanese, from complete beginners right through to JLPT Level 2.

This dictionary features no romaji, only kana and kanji, which I think is extremely helpful for those serious about learning Japanese.
Any dictionary with entries written in romaji will cause you to rely on alphabetized Japanese, and ultimately slow down your reading of ‘real’ Japanese.

All kanji have ‘furigana’ written over them so you can understand how to pronounce them straightaway.
It’s well set out and easy to find what you are looking for.

However, the main reason for recommending this dictionary is the example sentences.

Each entry comes with several examples of the word in context so you can understand how the word is actually used in Japanese.
Sometimes when you look up an English word you may find several Japanese words that are close to the English meaning, so how do you know which one to use?

You can only work out which is right by looking at each word in context and this is where a dictionary with example sentences is really useful.

You can also avoid those mistakes where you’ve ended up with a totally un-Japanese sentence by translating the English ‘word for word’.

I lived in Japan for 3 years and I used this dictionary pretty much everyday.

The only drawback is that it’s not exactly portable, being hardback and quite thick (although I believe it is now available in paperback).

This could also be a plus-point however, as the number of entries means you won’t grow out of this dictionary too quickly.
Overall, well worth the money and the most useful 英和dictionary I’ve found. Elizabeth

Elizabeth recommends the following dictionary:

Kodansha's Furigana Dictionary: Japanese-English/English-Japanese

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