Reddit reviews Kanji Dictionary: Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten

自分はNintendo DSの国語辞典アプリ「漢字そのまま楽引き辞典」が好みですが、Androidの場合「新明解国語辞典第7版」がクラスメートに多く使われ、国語辞典の値段が通常に少し高いので注意してください。

一方、厳密に言えば辞典ではないですが、「All国語辞典」は複数のオンライン国語辞書（Yahoo, Goo, Weblioなど）を一気に検索する機能があるアプリで、無料でダウンロードできます。

This one?

It never leaves my DSiXL, now that I have the 3DS for gaming. It's not meant to actually teach the language, it is actually a Japanese to English dictionary. You write the Kanji and it tells you words that use that Kanji. I had two years of Japanese study before I began using it, so I can't say how well it would work for extreme beginners, as it is a Japanese title first, and the menus and everything are in Japanese.

But as an alternative to an electronic pocket dictionary, it's fantastic (and I got it when it came out, so it was much cheaper than a dictionary then too. Not as much now.)

These are what I use, they might not be exactly what you're looking for, but they are my old standby tools.

Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten for DS is good for scribbling characters out and getting a response. It's not very tough on stroke order, though sometimes if you completely mess up the order the character won't come up right away. There are plenty of electronic dictionaries that let you write out kanji, too. As far as stroke order, Jim Breen's Online dictionary, search under Kanji Look Up, search the kanji and click on SOD or SODA (stroke order diagram). There are basic rules for stroke order, left to right, top to bottom (http://thejapanesepage.com/kanji/stroke_order reading this I realize I've been doing some wrong... I should really study more.)

DS software, way too expensive here, but this is it: http://www.amazon.com/Kanji-Dictionary-Sonomama-Rakubiki-Nintendo-DS/dp/B000O2S9VQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313021801&sr=8-1

Kanji Lookup on Jim Breen:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1B

I considered getting one awhile back but they all were really pricey to order from the US and I didn't think I was advanced enough yet to make good use of it. Instead, I took the recommendation of some guy on YouTube and got this:

Kanji Dictionary: Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000O2S9VQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_ppFkQuEHMshEi

If you have a DS (or even just buy one for this) it's a fraction of the cost and has most of the same features. It has kanji drawing recognition for looking up words whose pronunciation​ you don't know and the Japanese-English dictionary is way more reliable than internet dictionaries (you can tell because the definitions make better sense and the example sentences are actually readable). I am happy that I settled for the DS cartridge for now because it's more than adequate at the intermediate level.

Ah, thanks, that makes a lot of sense. I can probably find similar sources for my field by going through all the technical documentation that's out there; I've already been doing a bit of very rough translation work for the company (slowly, and with a lot of help from WWWJDIC and the life-saving DS Kanji Dictionary), but hadn't considered it as a potential avenue for study.

Any tips for getting in some verbal conversation practice on short notice? I'm in the process to trying to find a tutor / conversation group in my area but a lot of the leads have fallen through.

Yeah I've had this problem before, I bought this dictionary for my DS, but got tired of it because it took AGES to type anything in, especially Kanji as recognition was a little difficult.

攻撃開始へ最終手続
こうげきかいしへさいしゅうてつづき
final procedures toward commencement of attack

Problem is it's an image so unless you do some OCR it won't be so easy to just plug into Google translate. BUT, for those of you studying Japanese here are some good tools.

Google translate for one, obviously.

Kanji Dictionary Lookup (By stroke number and radicals) - If you're studying Japanese, it is SO important to understand how to count number of strokes (not as intuitive as it may seem) and different radical types.
Kanji Dictionary

Rikaichan (Firefox extension that will let you hover and get hiragana readings for kanji as well as English and definitions. For a word to word basis, I think it's better than Google Translate.)
Rikaichan

EDIT One more good reference I forgot to mention. If you have a Nintendo DS, I find that Kanji Dictionary: Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten is a great starter dictionary that allows you to directly input kanji for easy lookup. It's so much more convenient to write in a character than use the stroke order / radical lookup system of most web based dictionaries. The only thing is now stroke ORDER becomes pretty important for the software to register input correctly. So don't skimp on understanding proper stroke order. It is not the same just because it looks the same. (Although if your stroke order is out of whack, your Kanji will probably look out of order too from an native's perspective.) Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten