I can add a couple freewares that helped me:
Jquick Trans dictionary software.
http://www.coolest.com/
JWP Word processing software with dictionary functions.
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/japanese.html
The second one is all I keep installed lately as i can sound out the words and get a full explanation with kanji, katakana and hiragana. I find it indispensable.
In a pinch I've even used Windows' Character Map using Arial Unicode MS font and selected Windows: Japanese character set to output the Japanese letters and then pasted them into Google's Language tools for a rough English translation of the phrase.
