Kowai 怖い

The first whole sentence in Japanese ever written on this blog was "Kawaii desunè!". It means: "oh, isn’t that cute?". It was on the occassion of the microscopic dogs in fashionable outfit.
So summarising lesson 1 Japanese: 　可愛らしい　kawaii = cute.

Now lesson 2. The new word of today is kowaii. Kowaii sounds a bit like kawaii but means wuite the opposite. Something like scary or creepy or anything but cute.



Last Wednesday in Roppongi, a neighbourhood north of ours. A lot of noise from a loudspeaker. A demonstration again? The police rolled out a road block. Those road blocks can be found on many a street corner because of the many embassies and governmental buildings in the area. I never witnessed one actually working. Untill today.


A black van with a megaphone installation on top. The microphone apparently held by somebody hopping mad. A police man is talking to the man. You can hear only the driver resound loudly through the whole area. He is not let through. Traffic is jamming.



We had heard of black vans of hyper nationalist groups that drive through town with almighty racket. This is one.



Tomorrow is a national holiday. Yes again indeed. This time it is about… er … the founding of Japan or something the like. A long weekend and a field day for nationalists. Today I ran into this van at a station. Much noise, bot not from the van. On the other side of the street, in front of the station flags fly and somebody is shouting in a megaphone.

Four men. The leader on a podium. Uniform and symbols don’t need further explanation I guess.

My presence had a deranging effect on these marchers. The second man grabbed his mobile phone with camera as an answer to my photo camera. Apparantly in an effort to intimidate me, but then mine is bigger by all means...

Also the boss was distracted. The volume of his shouting decreased considerably once he spotted me.

What is driving these people? They are nationalists. One could ask what is still to be gained for nationalists on an island but still: they are nationalists. An old issue are the Kuril islands, a chain of small islands between Japan and Russia claimed and disputed by both countries. A second issue is America. And that is what this Adolf adherent is very mad of. Ever since the events culminating in the attack on Pearl Harbor and even after the defeat in 1945 America remains a target. The third nuisance is the foreign world in general. Compaining about too many foreign movies on television, kids alledgedly speaking poor Japanese nowadays and so on.

Japan has a varying relation with the outside world. For centuries periods of total seclusion and periods of intensive trade with other countries followed each other. In the Edo period 1600 to 1868 Japan was closed. Only the Dutch were allowed to enter on a tiny island in Nagasaki for trading. The Portuguese were expelled, all others were refused access. The reason: the Dutch were the only not imposing Chrisitanity. In 1868 the Meiji period began. Under thread of American warships Japan opened for trading with other countries. I wise decision as the risk of being colonised was very real. The outside world did not know that Japan’s military force was very limited. From 1868 Japan worked very hard to catch up with western nations and even pretended tob e able to become a colonial power. Thus came the invasion of Manchuria, Korea and the expansion into south east Asia.

Back to Tokyo of today. Four men in front of the station. A spectator asked me if was able to understand Japanese. I tried ‘yes’. The man said something like these nationalists are quite excentric and he apologised for this spectacle.

Exercise for today’s lesson in Japanese: Which caption fits with this picture?

1. Kawai desunè?
2. Kowai desunè?