Japan: kuwaee

Before we went to Japan my friend gave me a short list of few useful Japanese words. One of them was kuwaee – cute. I paid more attention to the other ones, but she was right – kuwaee was the word we heard most often in Japan. Outside of our hotel room we were met with lots of smiles and adoration of Cat’s cuteness. Women of all ages were the most open and loud in their praise for the cute kid – the younger ones would often dissolve into giggles and excited hand waving, while the older ones would try to strike a conversation with The Little Girl and myself. I wish I could speak Japanese. After the reserved attitude of most London inhabitants it was fantastic to have some friendly attention and I loved to see how much love is shown towards children in Japan in general. I liked the fact that we didn’t see many prams around; most small children were carried or walked next to their parents/careers. So I did the same (as I do anyway in London when we aren’t going too far) trying to encourage The Little Girl to walk more.

The Japanese streets are free of rubbish, in over a week there I only saw one abandoned can, and so I found our walks less stressful. Here in London I constantly have to stop The Little Girl from picking up beer cans, bits of broken glass, food wrappers and cigarette buts, which often results in frustration for both of us. Anyway back to the topic of this post, in Stratford-upon-Avon we kept on running into Japanese tourist groups and it was fun to understand one word – kuwaee. Are there any words from foreign languages that you learned during your trips and still remember?