Kenkyusha's Furigana English-Japanese Dictionary

Rating:
Summary: Kenkyusha's Furigana English-Japanese Dictionary
Review: 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.