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.