Etegami is a Japanese style of drawing with a written message on it. Etegami artist Debbie created the drawing here which contains the Japanese phrase "otenki uranai". That basically means "a trick for prophesying the weather." Here’s what Debbie wrote about the weather trick:
"When I was little, the neighborhood kids and I followed an ancient, kids-only tradition for forecasting the next day’s weather. We would loosen the shoes or sandals on our feet, and kick one of the pair into the air. If the shoe landed right-side up, we knew that tomorrow would be nice and sunny. If it landed upside down, it was a sign of bad weather looming on the horizon. If it landed on its side, we had to prepare ourselves for a mixture of good and bad weather."
Thanks for sharing that cool tradition Debbie!
Debbie has a wonderful blog featuring her etegami called Dosankodebbie’s Etegami Notebook. You can also visit Debbie’s etegami shop on Etsy.
This article was posted on Monday, July 29th, 2013 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Arts and Crafts, Countries & Cultures, Etegami, Folk Lore, Games Around the World, Japan, Japanese, Languages, Predicting Weather, Seasonal, Weather. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
2 Responses to “How Kids Predict the Weather in Japan”
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September 4th, 2013 at 12:47 pm
Wow. Didn’t know that there would be a tradition like this. Seems, pretty good. Weather predicting at its finest. haha. Shoes (or sandals) in the air everyone! =)
April 4th, 2021 at 2:54 pm
Very interesting! Thanks for sharing ✅