noun:

• choir singing from music - From English "choral reading"
• reading aloud in a group

noun:

• facing a wall for nine years in meditation (by Bodhidharma at Shaolin Temple) - four character idiom - Buddhism term

noun:

• full house (esp. in card games such as poker)

noun:

• square framing (in a house, temple, screen, etc.)

noun:

• Satsuma (ancient province located in present-day Kagoshima prefecture)
• sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) - abbreviation ➜ 薩摩芋【さつまいも】

noun:

• Deer-Antler-Cutting Ceremony (held in Nara between late October and early November)

noun:

• ranking system based on dan and kyū (in martial arts, go, shogi, etc.) ➜ 級・段

noun:

• ranking system based on dan and kyū (in martial arts, go, shogi, etc.) ➜ 級・段

noun:

• writings on many different topics ➜ 雑書
• book that cannot be classified in any category

noun:

• Japan's first coinage (dating to 683 CE, but perhaps never in circulation) ➜ 和同開珎

noun:

• ceremony performed by Chinese merchants disembarking in Nagasaki (Edo period) - obscure term

noun:

• parched flour, esp. barley (can be drunk in hot water with sugar) - Food term ➜ 麦こがし・香煎

noun:

• stone for cutting one's pubic hair (in public baths)(Edo period) - archaism

noun:

• (sake) brewed in wooden vats, squeezed out by weight on a pole - obsolete term

noun / ~する noun:

• depalatalization (e.g.. dropping small kana in borrowing foreign words into Japanese); depalatalisation - e.g. conversion of きゃ to か - obscure term - Linguistics term ➜ 拗音【ようおん】

noun:

• funhouse; fun house
• subculture magazine published in Japan between 1974 and 1985 ［ビックリハウス］

noun:

• love ban; talent agency rule forbidding clients from getting involved in romantic relationships

expression / adjective:

• being dealt a bad hand (in mahjong, card games, etc.) - idiom
• poor (handwriting) - idiom
• unscrupulous - idiom

noun:

• solitary confinement in a dark cell without bedding (for up to one week)

noun:

• pao cai; pow tsai; pickled vegetable, usu. cabbage, found in Szechuan cuisine - From Chinese

noun:

• cross-cut sawtooth oak charcoal (resembling chrysanthemum flowers, and used in tea ceremonies)

noun:

• blind official who specialized as a musician, masseur or acupuncturist (abolished in 1871) - archaism

noun:

• Wotan (god in German and Anglo-Saxon mythology); Wodan ➜ オーディン

noun:

• 1585 edict by Toyotomi Hideyoshi which banned war between feudal lords in Japan

noun:

• yu; free reed wind instrument used in ancient China and Nara period Japan