Three days cold, four days warm

Kuri and Kona

I have been asking tons of garden questions, and while I can`t contribute a lot of garden knowledge at present, I thought it would be fun to share a little bit about living in Japan.

In spring, weather alternates from warm to cool for quite a while. There is a Japanese four character expression to describe this. The phrase is 'sankanshion,' or 三寒四温 in Japanese.

I think it is fun how different cultures have a word or expression that is unique to that language. We could describe how spring weather fluctuates up and down, but there is not a specific phrase for it in English.

Lisa K

@Kuri and Kona Japan is a lot like So. Calif. we just had rain last Thursday (we got 1" in my area) and it has been cold and cloudy since Thursday, but starting Monday we are going to heat up big time for this area.

Our weather is determined by if it is an on-shore/lows or off-shore/highs. On-shore comes from the west/ocean and off-shore comes from the east/deserts.

jowitt.europe

@Kuri and Kona we have “April weather”. It does not necessarily have to be in April, but when the weather goes haywire we say “April weather”. One day cold another hot, half day sun, half snow or rain... This is what we are having right now.

Kuri and Kona

@jowitt.europe Is this something that you say in English where you live? Although English is my native language, I don`t actually speak it most of the time (although I type it on the internet), so I have lost track of certain idioms and expressions.

Michelle D

@Kuri and Kona thanks for sharing this. It is fun to learn about.

Here is Michigan, USA the weather tends to be extremely unpredictable and constantly fluctuations. Around here we say "It's Michigan. If you don't like the weather wait 5 minutes it will change." Yesterday was a fine example of this. In the morning it was sunny and beautiful. Throughout the day we had periods of rain, snow, sleet, hail, calm, windy, and sunny like it was all set on shuffle.