Gaijin friendly japanese dictionary?

Are there any dictionairys out there that will show you the hiragana of the kanji? most that i have seen when going from English to Japanese just show a kanji and not the hiragana. also it would be good if you could draw the kanji on it to find the word by radicle etc.

Thanks

If you're talking about a paper dictionary, I can recommend this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Random-House-Japanese-English-English-...

It doesn't show hiragana but instead lists everything in romaji and kanji.

You mention writing kanji so I'm assuming that you're looking for an electronic dictionary. All the Japanese ones are geared toward Japanese speakers who are learning English and are not so helpful. I've had the occasion to try them all including the newest models where you can write the kanji and they are still very difficult to use. I personally use a pda that is set up with free software that allows to you write your entries in kanji, hiragana, katakana, romaji, or English and uses the excellent jdic database found here:

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html

Let me know if you would like more info about this as I am considering writing a guide about it.

If you are looking for an electronic dictionary, probably the best ones are "canon" brand. They have English menus and a "jump" funtion where you can highlight kanji to get the reading.

Like said above, though, most dictionaries are for Japanese people who know kanji. Play around with a few until you find one you can work with. :)

If you have a pocketpc (PDA that runs on Windows Mobile) I use the Ectaco Partner Dictionary (japanese to english) version. Has the Kanji and kana spellings of words. However I do not think they make a desktop version.

ok thankyou for all your advice, i think i am going to go with the cannon v300 you can draw kanji on it and it has the "jump" fetaure so i can easily find meanings of kanji

any of the current electronic Japanese dictionaries from Casio, Sharp, or Canon can do this.

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Also, any PC can do this using the IME Pad once you've installed the feature in XP/Vista and search through wwwjdic posted earlier.

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or if you're just reading text online, www.popjisyo.com, which will put them everywhere.

how to look up a kanji phrase on an electronic dictionary?