tokyostyle wrote:

What's wrong with Yahoo! 辞書?  (It contains that dictionary and 大辞林.)

If you really prefer something purchased I'll dig out my old collection of dictionaries and see which ones had the best example sentences.  (I was really addicted to them back when I had classes with no way to get internet access.)

I want to get a digital one because I can format it to my own style for my srs decks.

http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=10140
(This tool is awesome)

I  have 大辞林, 明解国語辞典, and 広辞苑 all in EPWING format.  Honestly I don't feel that any of them have a ton of example sentences.  Also my Casio XD-B3800 has デジタル大辞泉 on it and I don't see any examples there either.  On the other hand 新和英大辞 seems to have plenty of bilingual examples.

It's possible that the DVD-ROM versions of contain more sentences, but you might need to focus on dictionaries aimed at middle school students.  My paper elementary school dictionary has lots of examples, but they are too dull and simple to make for interesting study.

In any case the tool you linked only supports very specific dictionaries so the most obvious thing to do is to ask the author of the tool for recommendations out of the supported list.  Out of all of them you are going to get a lot more "hits" from 研究社　新和英大辞典　第５版 than from everything else combined.

patriconia wrote:

I have in physical copy 大辞泉 and a smaller 旺文社 dictionary. I also have 大辞林 and ウィズダム和英・英和 on my computer and phone, so I went through a few entries and counted the example sentences, and here’s what I found:

First, I looked up a simple word most beginners will encounter early into studying: 買う

Wisdom J-E - 24 examples
大辞林 - 11 examples
大辞泉 - 7 examples
旺文社 - 3 examples

If I look up another word that's quite straightforward, maybe something like 応対, I get this:
Wisdom J-E - 4 examples
大辞林 - 2 examples
大辞泉 - 2 examples
旺文社 - 1 example

Maybe a word with tons of usages: 付く
Wisdom J-E - 32 examples
大辞林 - 72 examples
大辞泉 - 54 examples
旺文社 - 23 examples

I don’t claim this as any sort of scientifically conducted study, but I would say it matches my experience (which is mostly between Wisdom J-E and 大辞林). The J-E dictionary often provides a lot of pretty good sentences that show a range of usages. Sometimes the J-J dictionaries will have more definitions for a word, though, as well as less common words I can’t find in J-E. A thing to watch out for, though, is sometimes J-J example sentences are pulled from classic literature. I noticed one of the 大辞林 examples for 付く being from the Tale of Genji, so those kinds of examples may not be the greatest for modeling standard, modern usage.

Thanks for the reply. I think then in terms of example sentences (J-E) seems like the good choice. I'm definitely aiming for modern usage and common sentences of that vocab. word in use. I'll try that dictionary out to see if it works to my liking. The J-J sentences is because I want to keep that J-J only feel going(I'm noticing more now then ever that learning within the language helps better). Well at least it does for me(I've reached the stage where it can be of great use)

I've personally found that J-J dictionary entries are great for verbs and nouns used as verbs.  These are the kinds of words where an English entries tends to muddle the actual usage.

However for certain nouns it can be entirely silly.  If RTK doesn't help you realize what a 洗濯機 is then you are probably better off with either a picture or the English definition.  After all you didn't figure out it just by the kanji so really how helpful is this?

せんたく‐き【洗濯機】
洗濯に用いる機械。ふつう電気洗濯機のこと。

On the other hand I understand the importance of having the ability of being able to describe Japanese entirely in Japanese so having a feel for this process is invaluable.  You can explain cultural concepts to your non-English speaking friends and make up definitions for non-existent words!

ポテト税金[fry tax]：フライポテト頼んでない人にポテトを取られること。