A useless dictionary; I'm sorry I spent my money on it.

I agree with the previous reviewer. I'm currently living in Japan and was tired of having to carry around a book-form dictionary that was bulky and sometimes didn't include the Japanese word I was looking for. I looked at the electronic dictionaries in the Japanese market (of which there are many!) and loved the huge numbers of vocabulary included but was a bit intimidated by all the kanji usage that the dictionaries displayed. I purchased the Ectaco EJ400T Dictionary because there are not many Japanese/English electronic dictionaries developed with English speaking Japanese learners in mind and from the Ectaco website it seemed that the EJ400T was specifically developed for English speakers. From the website description I thought it would be a very useful dictionary for me. However it turned out to quite the opposite!

First of all, since I have been living in Japan for about 1 year, I already have an extensive Japanese vocabulary so I input some Japanese words I already know to check on the meaning. The EJ400T displayed some very strange definitions and sometimes didn't even include the word in it's dictionary. I was very surprised and confused since the words I was trying to look up were very simple and common words!! I showed the dictionary to my Japanese friend and she was also confused about the definitions. This from a Japanese speaker!

Second, although inputting English words did generate some correct Japanese definitions, these did not include any usage examples or grammar points, which is essential if you want to use the Japanese word correctly. Even my book-form dictionary has grammar points and some usage examples and all Japanese electronic dictionaries in the Japanese market have extensive usage examples for both English and Japanese definitions.

The EJ400T does have an English word, spoken pronunciation function and a section on English idioms in which the idiom is translated into Japanese, but again since I am an English speaker, these functions are not really useful for me. It seems to me that this dictionary would be more useful for a Japanese speaker trying to learn English, so I don't understand why it is being marketed to English speakers trying to learn Japanese. And since there are so many wonderful Japanese/English electronic dictionaries in the Japanese market already and the EJ400T is far behind (far behind!!) in functions and ability to these dictionaries, I wouldn't be able to recommend it for a Japanese speaker trying to learn English either.

One more thing which might not bother other people, but which bothered the heck out of me was that typing in letters on the EJ400T is somewhat difficult because the buttons stick. This might just be a little bit of a nag, but, after trying the Japanese dictionaries which have such nice, smooth buttons that type the letter at the slightest touch, I've become spoiled, I guess!^_^

Needless to say, I was very upset about having wasted my money on this dictionary, so I contacted the company to see if I could return it. They have a 7 day return policy but because I was living in Japan when I bought the dictionary, and didn't want to pay the outrageous shipping cost that they were offering to ship it to Japan, I had it shipped to my home in the states (naively thinking that there would be no reason to return the dictionary!) and then had it sent here. On the 8th day, I called them to try to return it and was told that their return policy is for 7 days and there are no exceptions (which is outrageously short considering that other companies give you at least 14 or 30 days!!, but since I knew that going in, it was my stupidity to order from them).

So if you are considering buying this Japanese/English dictionary, don't be misled by what the Ectaco website says about it. Even though there may be 450,000 entries (as they claim, although I'm doubtful since I couldn't find many words I looked for in the dictionary), the entries aren't very useful if you don't know how to use them (Japanese words, apart from nouns, have many usage forms). More distressing would be looking up a word, getting the wrong definition or translation, and not knowing that it was wrong, as might happen often with this dictionary.

I would stick to a book-form English/Japanese-Japanese/English dictionary (if you just want some simple translations written in English; I've been using Langenscheidt's Pocket Dictionary for the past year and it's been useful in many occasions) or, if you can already read hiragana, katakana and some kanji, then get a real Japanese/English dictionary from Canon, Sharp, Seiko, Casio and the many other makers out there. As I said before, these dictionaries include a lot of kanji in their definitions and translations, but if you are seriously studying Japanese, as I am, then at some point (sooner rather than later) you HAVE to learn kanji. And these dictionaries all include a jump function which takes you to the hiragana reading of any kanji you might not be familiar with. I myself went out and bought a Canon Wordtank G50 (for which you can order a free English manual), but because I live in Japan, I was able to go to department stores and try out many brands. I guess if I still lived in the states, I would probably have stuck to a book-form dictionary until my kanji knowledge was better.

However, if you have to have an electronic dictionary, there are some websites that offer information about them (and none of these websites include the EJ400 in their comparisons, which is telling). They aren't sold in many places in the states, but I've found many websites that do sell them (you can also look in Yahoo.com shopping) and there's a lot of info. about their features online as well (www.bornplaydie.com/japan/dictionary/dictionary.htm, www.thejapanshop.com). Some can be pretty pricey, but others are not much more than the EJ400T and, since all the people I know that own electronic dictionaries (EVERY Japanese person I know owns an electronic dictionary!^_^) use them for many years, the price is worth it, unless, of course, you buy the EJ400T!

Bottom line: Don't buy the Ectaco EJ400T Dictionary/Translator. It's like throwing money away!