Bon Odori: Buddhist summer festival of the dead, which honors ancestors.

gaman: Patience, perseverance.

geta: Japanese wooden sandals.

haiku: A Japanese verse form, rendered in English as 3 unrhymed lines of 5, 7, 5 syllables respectively, often on some subject of nature.

hinotama: Fireball.

Issei: First-generation Japanese immigrant in America.

Nihonmachi: Japantown.

Nisei: American-born children of Japanese immigrants; second-generation Japanese Americans.

Sansei: American-born grandchildren of Japanese immigrants; third-generation Japanese Americans.

shoji: A translucent sliding panel of rice paper on a wooden frame, used in Japanese homes as a partition or door.

tanomoshii: To rely on or depend on; Japanese American savings associations formed for mutual financial support.

tsukemono: Pickled vegetables.