Hi all

I'm currently in Japan, where I will be for at least the next 11 months. I'm yet to purchase a dictionary because of the cost involved and the fact I have no idea what is good and what isn't.

At home I use a net based dictionary which I find to be great, but I need something for on the move.

I have heard great things about the Nintendo DS for use as both a kanji dictionary and also for a way to practice kanji using various games and the like. In that respect alone it seems like a good purchase (plus I can play normal games too!).

Can anyone recommend a good electronic dictionary? I know they don't necessarily come cheap but I may be able to pick one up second hand or something.

At the moment my mobile dictionary is the one on my keitai!

Thoughts please!

Get the DS dictionary, it's called

漢字そのまま
楽引辞典

kanji sonomama
rakuhijiten

It's the only dictionary I use, and it's one of the best.

If you're looking for a good kanji trainer, get the Kanken game.

[Katsuo]

Any electronic dictionary is of course a compromise between features such as price, content, screen size, weight, etc.

One I like at the moment is the Sharp PW-M800. Reasons:
- Very light (and therefore portable)
- Relatively inexpensive (usually 9,600 to 13,600 yen)
- All the dictionaries I need most (Kojien, E-J & J-E Genius, KanjiGen, Kotowaza, 4-ji jukugo)
The main negative point is that the display is relatively "chunky".

Some features to consider when buying are:
Japanese content, kanji stroke order, handwriting recognition, E-E dictionaries, English manual, English operation, speech (many languages available, but unfortunately not Japanese), colour display, high quality display, backlighting, expandability (add-on cards), can play MP3s, TV, voice recording, etc

I've spend a lot of time testing electronic dictionaries in shops. Some of my opinions about makers are:

1) Seiko - have the best keyboards. Their top models (costing over 50,000 yen) have superb quality displays with really crisp text.

2) Sharp - Cram in lots of content (often not needed). Handwriting recognition is excellent. Colour displays and built-in TV available on some models.

3) Casio - The biggest range of models. Best for expandability. Generally good, but handwriting recognition is poor compared to Sharp.

4) Canon - Good quality features rather than large quantity. Often have full or partial English manuals and operation.

It's easy to make mistakes. Last year I bought a Canon M300. In the shop, it seemed ideal, but it takes five seconds to turn on which is often frustrating. The backlight is awkward to use. Also the KanjiGen displays searched-for kanji in a list rather than as a grid, and gives no indication of how long the list is.

So it's important to think of everything before buying.

One other thing, I found the sweat generated in a Japanese summer can destroy 電子辞書, so try to keep them as clean and dry as possible.

If you don't already have a DS, you should probably just get a normal denshi jisho. Ignoring issues of dictionary quality, if you would be buying a DS primarily for Japanese related purposes you should consider the fact that you would never be able to use the dictionary to look up words while playing other games.

I agree with what mystes says... My DS is great for playing games in Japanese, because I use a separate denshi jisho (electronic dictionary) while playing to look up the tough words.

If price is your concern, you can get very very cheap dictionaries in Japan (some as low as 3000yen, IIRC), but you won't get as wide of a vocabulary in the dictionary. When I first arrived in Japan ~3 years ago, I wasn't very good at Japanese, but I bought a top-of-the-line Canon Wordtank because they are generally the most robust of all the dictionaries out there.

I know other people that bought dictionaries that were "good enough" for their level of Japanese then, but after a year of immersion in the language they wanted to talk about more complex subjects, and their dictionaries failed them. My wordtank, on the other hand, once surprised the hell out of me by *actually* having the E->J definition of "Unified Field Theory", which is a fairly technical physics term. I looked it up jokingly, and then was blown away when my dictionary actually had the word.

If you plan on buying one dictionary for the rest of your studies, check out the latest WordTank. If you only want something that's good enough for now, and more importantly if you don't want to drop 3man on a dictionary, go for something more practical.

My advice:
If you're able to make it in to a Yodobashi Camera or Denkodo or any other electronics shop, there should be loads of dictionaries on display. Write down all the models that are in your price range, and then google for reviews of those models when you get home. Decide which features you want, and head back to buy your dictionary.

Hope this helps,
-ang

If you wind up buying a DS and the dictionary for it, it's going to be about the same as the mid-range electronic dictionaries. The main downside of the 電子辞典 is that it's mostly a uni-tasker. It does just one thing. The DS is nice because you can play games like KanKen, Kakitori-kun, and Yomi-tore. (I really like kakitori-kun.)

Also, the dictionary for the DS has the same stylus-type input that the 25,000 yen dictionaries have, and it's cheaper. But, it's only got a few dictionaries in it. (Genius2 and... I forget.) Startup is a little slow-ish-- 5-10 seconds, depending on your reflexes. That annoyed me after a while, to be honest. But if you're on a tight budget, and you're still learning, that might be the way to go.

I got a Sharp a few years ago, mostly because I liked its kanji lookup features. (It would let you pick out radicals, and search by other things as well.) Then I switched to the DS for a while, because stylus input is light years better than counting strokes and hunting through lists. (For me, anyway.) When I went to Japan last Fall, I decided to shell out 28,000 yen for a Sharp Papyrus pw-at 760 (without the TV and extra stuff), because it had the stylus input I wanted. (It's a lot cheaper now, of course.)

I like the newer Sharp. I don't love it, because it has some annoying features, but it works well enough for me. The kanji recognition is excellent, and it will even give you a list of kanji to choose from-- guesses in case it didn't read your kanji correctly. It's thin, but wide, so it doesn't fit well in things like pants. It has blind spots-- it has a big dictionary, but it's not all-inclusive. If I had the money and the ability, I'd get the Seiko, but that's 50,000, last I checked. Also, I haven't had much luck finding expansion dictionaries for the Sharp's SD slot.

It's an individual thing. Try before you buy. Seriously... make sure you're going to like it first.

If you buy a DS or a 電子辞典, buy it from a big chain store like Bic or Yodobashi-- and get the point card! With all the points I got from buying mine, I had enough money for a free shock-resistant case. Very nice. Point cards rock.

I agree with kumadondon

漢字そのまま楽引辞典 (kanji sonomama rakuhijiten) is all I use for a dictionary most of the time. It has great recognition capabilities plus some quizzes and other tools that make it really helpful. Its sometimes a little difficult looking up English-Japanese with it unless you have a decent mastery of Japanese already, but the Japanese-English is great.

If you get a DS, なぞっておぼえる大人漢字練習完全版　(Nazotte Oboeru Otona Kanji Renshuu Kanzenban; the sequel to なぞっておぼえる大人の漢字練習) is a lot of fun and helpful (especially after Heisig) for continuing kanji knowledge and reinforcing it as well. Its designed for Japanese adults to help with production of the Kanji and readings etc. It has lots of minigames, customization, and a light dictionary function as well as tests and quizzes on all joyo kanji with example sentences. It is meant for adults, so unfortunately it can be hard unless you have high intermediate-advanced knowledge.

You should get the DS ONLY if you really want to play games as well. Like some other posts said you will be limited to only a very small set of dictionaries (with inferior lookup systems) for about the same price as a midlevel denshi jisho.

I've had Seiko and Casio dictionaries and I prefer the Casio (as do most Japanese people from the looks of it). The Sharps I used had a very clumsy and slow interface, and I personally found the handwriting recognition to be worse than my current Casio, contrary to previous posts. I guess it depends on how you write though. Thanks to the color screens and other goodies on the higher end Sharps, the battery life is also VERY short - about 1/20th that of my Casio.

Unfortunately the model I have doesn't have an equivalent for the 2008 Casio hardware refresh (yet), otherwise I'd recommend it. It's a nihongo-kei model which means it has almost exclusively Japanese content, whereas the others include more english-learning focused content instead. It's probably the single best dictionary you can get as a Japanese learner, although you'd probably want to add-on some more Japanese/English bilingual content like the English Kanji dictionary if you're just starting out.

I'll agree with Jarvik7 about the slowness of the Sharps. They seem to hesitate for a second or two, and at times, the keyboard isn't very responsive. So if you're typing in input, you tend to make a lot of mistakes.

But as long as your stroke order is good, you shouldn't have problems with it recognizing kanji. You also have to have a certain amount of ability at drawing kanji quickly-- but that's a drawback to all stylus-based input systems. You only have so much time to draw the character, and if you don't get the stroke order right, you'll get weird results.

If you get a plain LCD (no color, no backlight), battery life on the Sharp is fine. Any electronics that use color/backlit LCDs will have shorter battery life.

The 2008 Casio hardware sounds interesting. I'll take a better look at the Casio line when I get a new one in a few years. The main reason I picked the Sharp was familiarity with its interface.

I have a DS with 楽引辞典 and couldn't live without it. I wasted heaps of time trying to get handwriting recognition going with my PDA's with various results. But no problem at all on the DS, it's fantastic. I bought it mainly because of price, but I'd recommend it over anything else now. Especially for Heisig guys who are going to know how to write the kanji much more often than how to pronounce them. Normal electronic dictionaries with handwriting recognition are insanely expensive (well, when I looked.)

Edit: I mine most of my sentences from the examples in the DS dictionary also.

rich_f Wrote:But as long as your stroke order is good, you shouldn't have problems with it recognizing kanji. You also have to have a certain amount of ability at drawing kanji quickly-- but that's a drawback to all stylus-based input systems. You only have so much time to draw the character, and if you don't get the stroke order right, you'll get weird results.

In my Casio you can choose for automatic timed character recognition, or you can tell it to recognize the character by drawing the next character you're looking up in the next box, or pressing the recognize button. The default is for the "manual" recognition so you can take all the time you want to input the character. If you mess up the strokes/stroke order/it doesn't like your handwriting you can also select it from a list of possible matches if you want like the Sharp. My only complaint is that the box to write in is so small (in the 2007 hardware) but that was fixed in 2008 with a much bigger panel, as well as the main screen now also being touch sensitive.

[Katsuo]

Interesting that Jarvik7 gets the opposite result to me on Casio vs Sharp handwriting recognition. I found that while the Casios would recognize most kanji first time, there were certain characters they would repeatedly not get, no matter how I drew them (fast/slow, large/small, kaisho/gyousho, etc).

Here's a test: If you have access to a Casio, try writing 鳥 (bird). If most people find it works ok, then I'll have to conclude the problem is my handwriting.

I can recommend the DS dictionary as well if you are just looking for something cheap that will get the job done (assuming you dont factor the cost of the ds itself into this decision). I am occasionally not able to find a word that I am trying to look up though, whereas a more expensive dictionary might have a wider range of words.
Of course as someone else mentioned, the ds dictionary wont do you any good if you play japanese games on the ds, and need to look up a word from the game! Also, a standalone dictionary is probably smaller and lighter than a DS.

Thanks for all the replies guys.

If you look at the original post, it was Electronic Dictionary AND Nintendo DS, not OR!

The only thing I will have to pay for the DS is the price of the thing itself and about ￥6,000 extra for some special hardware and then I can get all the DS games free. Yes, i'm a dirty pirate, and yes, i'm ok with it.

I've seen dictionaries with all the extra features (colour, mp3, movies etc) and personally have no need for them. I have an ipod, i don't need another one! Colour... it's kind of gimmicky to me. It's certainly not a feature I care about.

I live near Osaka so I will probably head to bic when I buy this stuff. The point card thing is an excellent idea. A DS and Jisho should get a fair few points.

I don't want to get an incredibly cheap dictionary which I will just have to replace later on. I prefer to buy something of good quality which can last a good time. I'm serious about my studies so I don't mind making financial investments.

The features i'm looking for are I imagine the common ones. Good dictionaries e-j and j-e. Kanji input would be nice but my stroke order isn't the best, so may not be enough...

What models do you all have? Do they suit your needs?