Kodansha's Romanized Japanese-English Dictionary

Rating:
Summary: Thorough, Handy, Durable
Review: I'd recommend this dictionary to any starting student in Japanese. The entries are in Romaji, so looking up colloquialisms is no problem. Plenty of illustrations of usage are included under each entry, and it's a rare occasion when I can't find what I'm looking for.

Of course, it's no subsitute for a kanji dictionary, but one of the burdens that students must bear in learning Japanese is that they will eventually need at least two Japanese-English dictionaries - one for looking up words they hear and another for kanji. If you select this dictionary for the first category you won't go wrong.

Rating:
Summary: Useful and well-constructed reference text
Review: Useful, but if you are serious about learning Japanese buy the "furigana" versions. The introduction and grammar notes are also very good. I use the "furigana" version often (from what I can see it has exactly the same content as the romanji versions).