It Was Cloudless an Hour Ago. Japan Has a Word for the Wall of Water Now Coming Down.
To say sudden localized downpour in Japanese, say ゲリラ豪雨 (gerira gouu).
Thirty six degrees and blue sky at lunch. By three every phone in the train car is shrieking and the street outside is a river.
In this video
- ゲリラ豪雨です。 gerira gouu desu. It's a guerrilla downpour.
- ゲリラ豪雨です。すぐにやみますよ。 gerira gouu desu. sugu ni yamimasu yo. It's a guerrilla downpour. It'll stop soon.
Kanji in this phrase
- ゲリラ豪雨
- ゲリラごうう
- 局地的大雨
- きょくちてきおおあめ
Why this phrase
ゲリラ豪雨 is the nickname Japanese media gave to sudden, violent, hyper local downpours, and it is not an official weather term, the forecasters say 局地的大雨. The word matters to a tourist for one reason: it is not a typhoon. It ambushes a few blocks, dumps everything it has, and is usually done in thirty to sixty minutes, so the right response is to duck into a konbini rather than write off the afternoon.
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