Review of Hyoujun kanwa jiten by Maiko Covington

This is a standard kanwa jiten for students. It comes in a green, blue and grey box (1/3 blue, 1/3 green, and 1/3 grey, horizontal fat stripes) so you can notice it easily in the bookstore. Some of the things I really like about this dictionary are: (1) being a standard kanwa jiten, it has lookup by all three normal methods: busyu, strokes count, and reading. (2) My favorite thing: once you find the page the busyu starts on, on that page is a little table of contents for all the kanji starting with that busyu so you can find the page directly without paging through the section - saves time, (3) right next to this is a small list of kanji that lots of people think start with that busyu but they really don't, and it tells you where you should have looked, (4) both the on and kun readings are given clearly right underneath the kanji. I hate it when you have to look in the meaning section for the kun reading. (5) Kanji that are included in jyouyou kanji are noted as such, and those that are not in this group are in the dictionary too but noted as such, (6) it has the old and slang forms of the kanji cross referenced to the main entry, (7) it has JIS numbers as part of the entry! Great help in my jobs, and finally (8) it lists lots of famous Chinese poems that we have to memorize in school and gives the reading in koten and in modern Japanese. This is really my favorite kanwa jiten, but I guess I am just used to it. I've used it since junior high school. ^_^

☆ See all reviews by Maiko Covington.