Hello! I thought I’d post about one of nerdier aspects of Japanese learning: Dictionary collecting 
It is often recommended to use monolingual (Japanese-Japanese) dictionaries, either for more advanced learners or to get a deeper understanding of words you get stuck on frequently. I thought I’d share a few that I happen to like for different purposes.
Some Favourite Dictionaries of Mine
小学館の例解学習国語辞典
This is a dictionary aimed at elementary school kids and is extremely approachable for foreign learners for multiple reasons. Some standout features include full furigana, easy explanations for usage differences of common words/kanji, pictures for some plants/foods/objects/etc, kanji are labelled with the school grade they are taught in, the pitch accent for most words is indicated, and more.
The word selection is also quite nice, as it focuses on things elementary school students are likely to be curious about, including many words that show up in textbooks, so a lot can be learnt just from flicking through and finding interesting looking words. They also highlight a core 7700 set of words which the editors deemed as things elementary school students should know well, so if you see a red/purple highlighted word and don’t know it then you know you should pay a bit more attention to it.
This one is excellent for upper beginners and intermediate learners.
角川の新字源
This is a kanji dictionary. It has details of the origins and historical uses of thousands of kanji. It often includes reproductions of historical forms (oracle bone script, etc), and sometimes includes illustrations of objects that kanji represent. This is quite a tough dictionary to read, and I also believe some of the research on the kanji origins is now out of date (or just heavily disputed).
However, overall it is extremely authoritative and comprehensive. The back section information is also really interesting and is basically a small book in itself, explaining kanji origins.
This one is suitable for more advanced learners looking for a deeper knowledge of the logic of kanji.
小学館のちがいがわかる 類語使い分け辞典
This is a sort of thesaurus, except it makes direct comparisons of similar words via charts and example sentences. It has fairly detailed explanations for a book aimed at natives (where you’d assume differences are normally intuitive). Not a very long book and there are actually many others like this on the market, but I happened to buy this one first and found the format very easy to understand.
This one is excellent for intermediate learners, or as way to cover some common gaps for more advanced learners.
角川の基礎日本語辞典
This is a newer one in my collection (actually @Chihiro from our content team first made me aware of it!). Despite the title (基礎 (きそ) means ‘foundational’ or ‘basic’), the content is actually a fairly deep dive into the nuances of various extremely common Japanese words and phrases.
It is an excellent companion for understanding the logic of common Japanese words, often eking out nuances that are often glossed over in less specialist dictionaries.
As it is aimed at native speakers, the contents assumes an already quite strong familiarity with Japanese so I would only recommend this one to more advanced learners.
Anyway, I will stop there otherwise I will be here all day…
I’m always on the look out for new resources and I’m curious to know what dictionaries you guys use? Monolingual and bilingual are both okay as this is just ‘general dictionary chat’!
