In retrospect, perhaps I went a little overboard in my dictionary-shopping spree. Amazon Prime is a dangerous thing.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife…and that finding words in a dictionary is nigh impossible if you don't understand how the words are alphabetized.
I was most excited to get the Kodansha's furigana Japanese-English Dictionary. There was just one minor detail: "Japanese-English". They said it, and they mean it. You will find no English-Japanese section anywhere in this book. Naturally, this "Japanese to English" aspect means everything is organized according to a foreign alphabetization system.
As far as I can gather from the world wide web, which we all know to be a highly trustworthy source, the Japanese alphabetization system essentially works by sound order – a i u e o ka ki ku ke ko, etc. Is this right? The furigana dictionary agrees, but does this system of alphabetizing work with kanji as well? Fascinating, indeed.
I have a question in to a せんせい, so we'll see what she has to say.
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