Customer Reviews

Kenkyusha's Furigana English-Japanese Dictionary

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This is an excellent book, both for Japanese people who are learning English and for non-Japanese speakers who are learning Japanese.

It contains an enormous vocabulary of English words and their Japanese translations. There are 49,000 English headwords, many of which include variations of the headword. For example, the entry for the English word "luck" includes two Japanese words that mean "luck". It continues by including Japanese translations for the following phrases: "down on one's luck", "for luck", "in luck", "out of luck", "try one's luck", and "worse luck".

The Japanese translations are all written using Japanese characters - kanji, hiragana, and katakana. The reading of each kanji is written above the kanji in tiny hiragana (called furigana), so it is very clear how the Japanese words are to be pronounced provided that you are familiar with hiragana.

The book is a compact paperback (5" by 7" by 1"). It comes in a cardboard protective case and has a plastic protective cover. The binding used for this book is especially nice. The book lies flat when you open it on a tabletop. This means that when you open to a particular page, the book stays open on that page. Also, the binding seems very durable.

You must be familiar with hiragana and katakana to use this book, but familiarity with kanji is not a requirement since the pronunciation of each kanji is written above it.

This book is handy to use, very readable, and very helpful.

This is my favorite furigana dictionary. I suggested this one when I did my review of the other furigana dictionary. There aren't alot of choices and furigana is essential after you know how to read hiragana but aren't so great with your kanji.(This phase could (theoretically) last forever.)

This dictionary is full of useful words and even has foul language from English with extensive variations. (Yeah, so I looked em up. So what?.)

The other reviewer explains how the dictionary works.

I bought this as part of a book list recommendation provided by my Sensei for Japanese class.

If you're at all familiar with Japanese language (especially vocabulary) then you will definitely appreciate this text. The entries cover slang, scientific terminology, geography and more. With each English entry there are a number of examples showing appropriate word and grammar use -the Japanese have a knack for being specific when it comes to word selection (though native speakers readily admit that their language can be quite vague).

The only drawback to address is the fine, light font selected for the Japanese Kanji and Kana.

I recommend the purchase of a Bausch and Lomb "Linen Tester" (similar to a photographers' loupe) to discern the smaller jots and strokes -especially for the more complex Kanji. Regardless of how good your unaided vision or your corrected vision is -you WILL need additional magnification. I wear glasses (and sometimes contact lenses) and I still require strong 'store bought reading glasses' to enlarge the type.