Shih Tzu ([info]shihtzu) wrote,
@ 2008-03-20 15:04:00
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Current mood:わくわくドキドキ

ドキドキわくわく
Come to me, my lovely.

It has arrived! My brand-new Casio XD-GP9700 electronic dictionary! With dual touch-screen action! (Awesome!) Backlight! (Intense!) Handwritten kanji lookup! (Hell yes!) A wine companion! (Huh?) Several basic English conversation primers! (I don't think I need that.) A TOEFL Test Perfect Vocabulary guide! (No thanks.) A guide to living and studying in America! (I paid how much for this?) A dictionary of Japanese counting terms! (Wait, that's actually useful.)

Yeah, it's got way too much stuff I'll never use, but it's also got tons of improvements over my old SII SR-T6700 (you know, the one that died half a year ago). I'll, uh, report back, then, once I've had a chance to break it in?

Man, I really need to get back into reading Japanese now. Except I still have 500 pages left in The Count of Monte Cristo! I am reading it because I adore the anime adaptation and I want to know what they changed, which is so far not actually too much! Apparently the novel has lesbians and the anime does not. This is not usually how the process works.


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[info]ravenworks
2008-03-21 12:22 am UTC (link)
For a minute I thought you said "Japanese courting terms" and I pictured this whole formalized language of seduction that people would take lessons in..

I'm confused, though! On the whole, what does this thing do? Can you run your own programs on it, or do you basically buy it when you want to have a device that performs one of the functions in your list, and just accept the others as a bonus?

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[info]shihtzu
2008-03-21 01:00 am UTC (link)
Sorry, I didn't really clarify that this is an electronic dictionary. (Fix0red.) It contains several dictionaries (English-Japanese, J-E, J-J, E-E, thesauri, collocations, technical terms) as well as encyclopedias, study materials, guides to writing emails in business English, and a few random "smart" games like an English-test crossword and Sudoku. It's meant as a study aide or translation tool for Japanese learning English, but it's got enough useful dictionaries and functions that native English speakers studying Japanese can get something out of it too. Honestly, these things are invaluable for reading or translating, just because they're portable and obscenely fast to use.

The core features are the dictionaries. I think the other crap just comes from content bloat as they strive to attract people away from those dirty rascals at Canon, Seiko, and Sharp. I do kind of wish you could a la carte these things.

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[info]neillparatzo
2008-03-21 12:31 am UTC (link)
"A guide to living and studying in America"

That sounds like a minefield of hilarity.

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[info]shihtzu
2008-03-21 01:40 am UTC (link)
Most of it looks like boring visa / house rental advice, but I just ran across an actually kind of rad story of a woman who got locked out on her 26th-story balcony on a Friday night.

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[info]neillparatzo
2008-03-21 01:44 am UTC (link)
Does it have any advice on how to identify men's room vs. ladies' room in theme restaurants? I could use that.

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[info]shihtzu
2008-03-21 06:50 pm UTC (link)
What! I thought those were all unisex!

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[info]kouaidou
2008-03-21 04:26 am UTC (link)
Hmm, I should get me one of those. Save me the trouble of looking up everything on Jeffrey's. Where d'you order from, anywho?

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[info]shihtzu
2008-03-21 07:02 pm UTC (link)
I got it from smartimports.net. They had the cheapest price I could find, and I can't complain about the shipping (only about $25, and it came in four days). Someplace called The Japan Shop also sells it, though I don't know anything about their service. It's actually a new model that only came out a month ago, so you can still get the older XD-GW9600, which would cost less.

Either one (or any of the other brands) is loads more useful than EDICT, which is the free dictionary Jeffrey's and WWWJDIC appear to be based on. Even if you only use the Kenkyusha Japanese-English dictionary, it's way more comprehensive and accurate.

For online dictionaries, I tend to stick with goo jisho and Space ALC. (Oh quirky, lovable Space ALC...)

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[info]kouaidou
2008-03-22 01:31 pm UTC (link)
Hmm, cool, thanks. I was gonna do amazon.jp but forgot they don't send electronics out of the country. Curse you, amazon.jp!!

I mostly like Jeffrey's because I've been using it for like six years and have gotten very comfortable with their kanji lookup engine. The only thing that would be more comfortable for me would be a direct kanji lookup touchscreen, and OH HEY WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT.

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