滾る

tagiru to boil over, to seethe

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I found it really interesting that the metaphorical connection we make in English between water rapidly boiling and an emotional foment is also present in Japanese.

邪な

yokosima na incorrect, inappropriate, impure

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I had never seen this character as a standalone noun. And I included the な na because it's important for me to remember which nouns use の no when becoming adjectival and which use な.
I have also been told that it is more common now to use 心が汚れている kokoro ga yogorete iru (a dirty mind (although literally, heart) where 邪な would have been used.

聡明な

soumei na wise

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I had never seen these two characters together like this. And I included the な na because it's important for me to remember which nouns use の no when becoming adjectival and which use な.

改め婆

aratamebabaa literally, the old woman who confirms accuracy

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For the first time, I will employ a visual aid.

During the Edo Period (1615 to 1867 CE), most women were not allowed to travel freely on their own outside of their community. It was therefore not unheard of for women to dress as men to travel somewhere, or to flee from somewhere.
But if you traveled on any of the main highways that connected cities in Japan (most readers might know of the Tokaido, the route between Edo (now Tokyo) and Kyoto that ran along the coast, but there were many others), you would need to stop at the stations along the route (and there were 53 such stations on the Tokaido between Edo and Kyoto). The shogunate used the stations, known as 関所 sekisyo in Japanese, to check on the movement of goods and people, and at a certain point in history, to check on the gender of travelers. Persons appearing as young men needed to present themselves before an old woman, officially employed by the shogunate, so that she could review the equipment, as it were, and give them leave to travel on.
Imagine putting that on your résumé!
Oh, and let’s have one more look at that old woman, as she peers intently through her eyeglass (optics were introduced by the Dutch):

躊躇

tyuutyo hesitation, indecision, waffling, vacillation

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It's a simple enough concept, but I think the characters are amazingly beautiful (in their complexity). Interestingly enough, both of the characters can be used for the same verb, ためらう tamerau, written as 躊う, 躇う, or even as 躊躇う, meaning to hesitate or waver.

写本

syahon manuscript, codex

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It crossed my mind earlier today that I didn't actually know if there was a Japanese term for a manuscript, in the sense of a book copied by hand by trained calligraphers, and not in the sense of the original text which editors sink their teeth into when producing a book today (which, in Japanese, is 原稿 genkou, meaning somewhat literally, original copy or posting). As a long-time fan of illustrated manuscripts (from the Latin for written by hand), or codices (the plural of codex, Latin for ledger, adopted in the middle ages to refer to manuscripts as well), I wondered about the Japanese. I was happy to see that 写本 is used. That first character is also used in verbs like 写る and 写す (uturu and utusu) which refer to the act of copying, or transfering, or even describing. We see it in compounds like 写経 syakyou (the hand-copying of Buddhist sutras, which is why 写本 makes so much sense to me) and 写真 syasin (photograph, which is fascinating, because for us, based on its Greek roots, a photograph is writing with light, where as for Japanese, a photograph is a copying of truth). And let me end today's adventures in pedantry here.

免疫不全

men'eki huzen Immuno-compromised

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One aspect of the terrible fact that King County is now leading the US in COVID-19 cases is that my husband and I are sharing many more news reports. I hadn't realized that there was a simple Japanese term for immuno-compromised, but as written, it makes perfect sense. 免疫 men'eki is immunity or your immune system and 不全 huzen means imperfect or incomplete.