Mine was about ￥30,000, but it came with a kanji writer. Casio EX-word.
Although I admit, I get more out of looking up kanji I don't know than learning Japanese words from it. There's usually a bit of back and forth between the English->Japanese and Japanese->English sections to be sure I have the correct term.
If you have a lot of extra cash lying around and are serious about learning Japanese, I did find this thing:
Japanese Language Tools--Complete System
It's ridiculously expensive, but appears to be quite useful.
However, if you've been studying hard for a year, and are capable of doing a homestay, I don't see why you couldn't get away with just buying one from a store in Tokyo. You should be able to use a cheaper one from there just fine.
I don't know about the prices now, but you could get electronic dictionaries without a kanji writer for as low as ￥8000. But as Hatredcopter stated, a good dictionary runs around the ￥250,000+ area.