A Japanese friend is a Tokyo University English major and he recommended an interesting book which has a lot of Japanese - English translations. His English is excellent and close to native level so his recommendations could be useful.

The book is titled 院単-大学院入試のための必須英単語1800 and the English subtitle is "1800 top words for grad school exams" and it is targeted to Japanese university graduates who wish to study in the US or England.

My friend said the Japanese sentences are fantastic and that the English translations are very good. The Japanese is beyond my level but I can say the dozen or so English sentences I looked at were complex and perfectly written.

Attached is the link to the publisher with a few images of actual sentences:

http://natsume.co.jp/book/index.php?acti...1&x=25&y=8

The ISBN is: 9784816341588

It seems okay, but it's by no means perfect. The sentences seem a bit stiff (I'm generalizing from one page seen in the preview) or don't describe the word well.
First off, "A taboo is a prohibition of a certain action"; this is false and fails to describe the word 'prohibition' as more of an absolute word. Something that is prohibiting you is stopping you from doing something with either no leniency or with great consequence. For example, "The debris around the door prohibited entry." or "During the Prohibition, the illegal sale of alcohol carried heavy penalties". Likewise, a taboo is something society thinks of as greatly improper or unnatural, but otherwise there is usually nothing stopping you. For example, a popular thing people associate with the word taboo is incest. Nothing is stopping you from screwing your sibling or first cousin except that it is socially unacceptable. A taboo is always dictated by social norm and only rarely has laws against it in developed countries.

Another example being the very next row on the page, 'arid'. They give the sentence "The earth comprises four climate zones: equatorial, arid, temperate, and polar." This sentence tells us nothing of the word 'arid' except that it's the name of a climate zone. Pretty much any other use of the word arid would've been better. Also, they don't capitalize 'Earth', thus suggesting that a handful of freshly scooped soil could be equatorial, arid, temperate, and polar all at the same time. 'Earth', in this sentence, is a proper noun that names the planet we live on and should be capitalized. Capitalization is important in written English and an advanced level book should demonstrate this.

This is only from one page. Assuming the rest of the book has a similar rate of error, then this probably isn't the best thing in the world for studying English. Of course, text books will never be the best for learning vocabulary, but that should be because of the limitations of the medium instead of the errors in a specific book.
Of course, I can only go by the English sentences. The preview pictures are far too small for me to be able to read the Japanese definitions they give, so I can't comment on those.

One thing I do like about the book is that it has a filter so that you can review from the same book instead of making individual cards. Such filters are never perfect, but they serve their purpose well enough.
Although, if purchasers of this book knew of SRS, then they probably wouldn't have a need for the filter, but it's still a nice touch.