foreign languages

This book is nearly perfect. It's very complete and comes in a very handy presentation. You can quickly find the 2000 most used kanjis and learn how to write them correctly. Besides a kanji's core meaning, you learn frequent combinations with other kanjis, which helps a lot for context interpretation. The layout invites you to read on, even after you found what you wanted, it's beautiful! My fear to kanjis is gone. I learnt to break them down in pieces and now I remember them easier. I just wish that this dictionary had kana instead of romaji in the meanings part. There's also a lot of "wrongly-counted" kanjis (for those of us who still don't master the SKIP system) that somehow ruin the layout, although is very considerate and helpful from the editor to give us a shorcut instead of going like "you have to learn how to count strokes first before using this dictionary"! For those of you who find this book incomplete, I tell you, you can always go to its daddy, Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Character Dictionary. Let's learn kanji!

I recently received the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary and I must say that I had my expectations fully met. Not only because it was all I had read about, but the edition was excellent, the size just perfect to carry around and the design is the main feature of the dictionary.
I had seen about 20 diferent dictionaries and I finally decided for this one (I must say that this is my first year with the language so that was a very important reason).
Let me tell you this straight: the book is for a basic-intermediate level (and it is designed as a pedagogic tool) so if you are a rookie or don't get well with the kanji, this book is for you. But if you know a considerable amount of kanji forget it, it only has 2230 so you better look for the New Japanese-English Character Dictionary, wich it's also got th SKIP, core meaning, stroke orders, etc, but is not so aimed to the learning.
Finally, the forget about the Nelson-like mamut dictionaries, the kosansha's editions are very superior (not in quantity of kanji but in quality, organization and in-deph.

It was a real pleasure to receive this huge, beautiful book printed on luscious paper with appealing fonts and even color ink. The people who put this together clearly understand the essential aesthetic value of the Japanese language, something which pedants such as Eleanor Jorden have failed altogether to grasp. Why should the study of Japanese be dry and ugly? Why shouldn't we enjoy using a book while learning from it as well? In general, I have found that the Kodanshi books tend to share this aesthetic approach.

I could spend the rest of my life perusing this fascinating text. Highly recommended.