“Japanese people aren’t scared of earthquake’s”. I genuinely believed that when I first moved to Japan.

Only when I felt the ground moving beneath my feet did I realise that everyone must be scared of earthquakes to some degree.

The degree of fear differs. A small shake is far scarier for someone who has never experienced an earthquake than for someone who has felt many.

A big, prolonged shake however unsettles almost everyone.

I was reminded of this last week while listening to a TBS radio presenter, Keiko Kojima, She was speaking after the major Magnitude 7.3 earthquake that hit Japan last week. (for context, the devastating March 2011 earthquake was magnitude 9.0).

Keiko used many derivations of the word 怖い KOWAI (scary) to describe her earthquake experience alone at night in a Tokyo tower block.

For context, Keiko called herself a 怖がり KOWAGARI (easily scared person)

When there is a quake, she immediately contacts her family who are currently living in Australia:

ものすごく怖いので、家族に連絡する MONOSUGOKU KOWAI NODE, KAZOKU NI RENRAKU SURU (I am extremely scared of them so I contact my family).

While the other presenter said he went to back to sleep straight after the quake, Keiko has a physical reaction to the shock. She was glued to NHK watching for updates while giving a 実況 JIKKYOU (running commentary) to her family online.

怖すぎて胃が痛くなる KOWASUGITE I GA ITAKUNARU (They are so scary my stomach starts hurting)

She also used this neat expression to describe the extremity of her quake-phobia: 怖くてしょうがない KOWAKUTE SHOUGANAI (They are absolutely terrifying).

On it’s own, しょうがない SHOUGANAI is a very common and useful phrase meaning can’t be helped / nothing can be done.

In this case, -てしょうがない -TE SHOUGANAI describes feelings that are so strong you cannot control them.

For example, some of you might be feeling: ラーメンがたべたくて　しょうがない　RAAMEN GA TABETAKUTE SHOUGANAI (I am desperate to eat ramen / I want to eat ramen so much I can’t control it)

Finally, Keiko also used KOWAI to speculate about how people near the epicentre of the quake in Tohoku felt.

怖かったでしょう KOWAKATTA DESHOU (It must have been really scary). でしょう DESHOU (I guess) is used here instead of です DESU to show Keiko is speculating about other people’s feelings. She can’t be certain of how those people felt, but she can have a good guess.

The lengths Keiko goes to manage her earthquake anxiety even include: まくらもとに スニーカー MAKURAMOTO NI SUNIIKAA ( keeping trainers beside her pillow)

Listening to the podcast was a reminder how fortunate it is to live in a country where the most dramatic force of nature is fog.

PS We had a cherry blossom party in St Ann’s Wells in Hove on Saturday. We talked about the well-known idiom 花より団子 HANA YORI DANGO (dumplings over flowers). It means that people prioritise functional things (such as mini savoury eggs), more than beautiful things such as pink flowers. I wonder if you agree.