Affordable Denshi Jisho.

I'll be heading to Japan next month on a student exchange. I'll be in the country for 15 days. One Week in Kakogawa in the Hyogo prefecture and before that I travel around Tokyo, Hiroshima and Kyoto for the week. Now the organisers of the trip have recommended that I bring around 50,000 spending money which is equivalent to $600 NZ. Which is how much I'll be taking. With the budget in mind and knowing that all accommodation and a few day trips have already been paid for, could you recommend me a Gaijin friendly denshi jisho?
As in I could type a word in and the Japanese equivalent would come out in Hiragana as well as Kanji? I guess that the denshi jisho, would be a lot cheaper in Kakogawa than it would be in Akihabara.

Also I will have to buy food for the seven days I am travelling around Japan. The guide I got recommends around 3000 a day, with no extravagances. Is that a realistic figure? Or can I eat for much cheaper than that a day?

I don't want to spend too much on a jisho and then have no money for other souvenirs so the Jisho would probably have to be priced at around 10,000ish

Okay, if you're only here for 15 days, why buy the denshi jisho? I lived here for three years before I bought one....I carried around a little pocket dictionary, and it worked for me just fine. I would totally not even bother with a denshi jisho. If you are planning on continuing to study, consider your needs carefully and get a quality denshi jisho that will meet your needs for longer than a 15 day trip.

I've wanted a denshi jisho for a while. Not just for those 15 days.

I assume that the cheapest Denshi Jhiso would be the ones used by Japanese to find out how to say..in English. they likely would have a Japanese keyboard and instructions in Japanese only, not at all practical for a foreigner who doesn't read Japanese!. Denshi Jisho for foreigners would be more expensive as there is less demand for them. Most tourist don't even bother to get one. I would be interested to know as I could use one.
I typed denshi jisho in the search function on this site and got a thread from 2006. at the time Denshi jisho for english speaking people were hard to find and even used ones way over 10 000 yen. As I thought the Japanese ones are for Japanese people, not for us foreigners.
www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0+24804
I guess now that one should buy one in an English speaking country. I just remembered having looked at a few of them a couple of years ago. The salesman told me that they gave translations of whole sentences from English to French, Italian etc. but when I checked most of the translation were badly inaccurate. of course the salesman spoke only English.. Electronic and small paper Dictionaries have the same problem: they only give a couple of meanings for a word and no context so a foreigner would end up making embarrassing mistakes.I have used Google translation and their translations of Japanese, French, Italian to English are so far from the actual meaning it becomes poetic but not that useful.

If you go to www.japaneselanguagetools.com you will see a Dell PDA that this guy loads with dictionary software. I got one from him and love it. I bought it for the kanji recognition and it is very convenient.
Not only that, but it's a PDA that has other uses.
It has dictionary software, not translator software, though, and my Japanese friends' electronic dictionaries fonts are much larger & easier to read.
Still, I would get it again.
And this isn't a paid advertisement.

I have loaded dictionary software myself onto my Dell Axim pda. If you have a windows mobile 5 or 6 enabled phone you can install the denshi jisho for free. I would suggest this method if you have the technical know how as they can often be finicky.

Otherwise, denshi jisho are made for the Japanese market and are not necessarily the best tool to Japanese learners. However if you are to get one I would look for a model that has handwritten kanji input and a jump function. They will make it a much more useful tool.

My son is an exchange student at Waseda. He was told that the best dictionary was a Nintendo DS with a Japanese-English dictionary loaded on it. It was cheaper than all those regular denshi jisho. And you can use it to play games. When I was in Japan a few weeks ago, Nintendo was also releasing a game/program for DS that you could practice writing kanji.

Hi, I'm a student at the University of Delaware. I went on our Kobe program last summer, and many people just brought their DS with a dictionary game. My TA recommended "sono mama kanji" which comes in a black cover. The good thing about it is that you get to write out the kanji, and it'll search for it. I'm going to Tokyo for another study abroad, and I do plan on looking for an actual denshi jisho, so if anyone else has any recommendations, I would really appreciate it!