Okay, so I decided on a textbook
 

So I decided to use Genki; what about a dictionary? What Japanese English dictionary is best?

I found that sometimes online dictionaries are the best. (good choice on the text book by the way, used that one myself.)

Denshi Jisho - Online Japanese dictionary is good if you don't want to spend any money.

I use Kodansha's furigana Japanese-English, English-Japanese dictionary.

Everyone kept recommending it so I figured that was the best way to go.
Is there a Kanji dictionary that you could recommend? I'm such a newbie, that I don't quite understand everything on the Genki dictionary site. What is skip and the colors mean?

can you give me the link? A lil lost, haven't been there in a while... (over a year)

uPal: Associative Kanji Learning

There is a box that says Skip. lists numbers, and has a colored symbol. This might have to do with the book, which is not going to be accessible to me till the end of Dec. when my kids get here for my son's wedding.

Hmm.. I don't know. I used this textbook from a class at a local community college. Awesome class but she never had us use this resource before, but the numbers change depending on the chapter/kanji. Sry, not much help.