noun:

• Old Imperial Family; former Imperial family; eleven former houses of the Imperial Family stripped of membership in 1947

noun:

• sencha tea ceremony; Way of Sencha Tea; Chinese-influenced Japanese tea ceremony using leaf tea rather than powdered tea, assoc. with the Ōbaku school of zen ➜ 煎茶【せんちゃ】・黄檗宗【おうばくしゅう】

expression:

• take a long walk off a short pier; go stick your head in a pig; bash your head against the corner of a block of tofu and die [literal]

noun:

• inscription on the bathtub of King Tang ("If you can renovate yourself one day, then you can do so every day, and keep doing so day after day.")

godan ~る verb / transitive:

• to shake; to jolt; to rock; to swing; to sway
• to shake (e.g. the political world); to disturb; to shock; to upset
• to put off a batter (by varying one's type of pitch) - Baseball term

expression:

• what's up with; what's the deal with; what's to be done with - colloquialism

adjective:

• old; aged; ancient; antiquated; antique; timeworn - of things, not people
• long; since long ago; time-honored
• of the distant past; long-ago
• stale; threadbare; hackneyed; corny
• old-fashioned; outmoded; out-of-date

suffix / ~の noun:

• -clad - after an article of clothing
• in the midst of - after a -masu stem - usually written using kana alone
• tenths (e.g. wholesale price, as tenths of retail price) - after a number in the ichi, ni counting system
• times (i.e. multiplied by) - after a number in the hitotsu, futatsu counting system
• able-to-seat (of a chair, etc.) - after a number of people

~と adverb / noun:

• clap (sound of wooden clappers) - onomatopoeia ➜ ちょんちょん
• chop vigorously ➜ ちょん切る
• slight movement (e.g. poke, small bird alighting) ➜ ちょんちょん
• the end; originally end of a play, marked by clap of clappers ➜ ちょんになる

noun:

• dot (esp. typographical) ➜ ちょんちょん

expression:

• You must seize every golden opportunity; Strike while the iron is hot; When you find a rare good buy, seize upon it for a future sale at a much higher price - four character idiom

expression:

• mixture of wheat and chaff; mixture of the good and bad; jumble of wheat and tares - four character idiom

noun:

• one's usual practice; one's old trick; one's usual modus operandi; the same old tactic - four character idiom

godan ~す verb / transitive:

• to shut; to close; to lock; to fasten
• to block (e.g. the way); to shut off; to shut in
• to plunge (in grief) ［とざす］

suffix:

• style; manner
• after (period of time) again (e.g. meeting again after a year); for the first time in (period of time) ➜ 久しぶり【ひさしぶり】

adjectival noun / ~の noun / noun:

• stormy and full of drama; many drastic events in the course of events; full of ups and downs; with many vicissitudes - four character idiom

noun:

• age of a young lady who is at the peak of her (sexual) attractiveness; marriable age (of a young lady); sweet sixteen

expression / godan ~る verb:

• to be summoned (i.e. of a geisha, by a customer)
• to be offered (the job of ...); to be invited (to do ...) - usu. as 〜の口が掛かる

noun:

• the four major pollution-caused illnesses (Minamata disease, Niigata Minamata disease, Yokkaichi asthma, Itai-itai disease); four big pollution diseases of Japan ➜ 水俣病・第二水俣病・四日市ぜんそく・イタイイタイ病

expression / ichidan verb:

• to frustrate (e.g. someone's plans); to give someone a surprise; to give someone a blow; to scare the hell out of

expression:

• Talented people tend to be of delicate constitution; Men of genius tend to be of delicate health; Whom the gods love die young - four character idiom

expression:

• no matter how you put it; whatever the circumstances may be; say what you like; no matter how you look at it

noun:

• lower part; foot; lower direction
• left part of the stage (audience's or camera's POV); stage right (actor's POV)

noun / ~する noun:

• cutting a fingernail (or toenail) to the quick; cutting a nail too close

noun:

• deep-set nail; deep-set part of nail

expression:

• cannot do a thing; feeling handcuffed; being at the end of one's tether; being at one's wit's end

noun / ~する noun:

• running alone; running solo
• having a large lead (over the others); being far ahead (of everyone else)
• having one's own way; ignoring others' opinions and acting as one wishes; arbitrary action