13 - Weather Feelings

Hello and welcome to the Gold Forest English Podcast. My name is Jordan and this is the first episode of 2025. First of all, I should say happy new year. I hope that 2025 is a very good year for everybody listening.

Today, I want to talk a little bit about the weather and how it can affect your feelings; how the weather can affect your mood.

I think one of the most comfortable feelings in the world for me is the feeling of being inside in the warm looking out at a cold winter's day - maybe it's snowing outside… but it's very cold outside and I'm inside and I'm feeling warm and maybe I have a hot chocolate or something like that in my hands. This is such a comfortable and cozy feeling. I really, really love that feeling of being warm inside, looking out at the cold world.

I think something that does impact this concept is which country you're from. So obviously I'm from the UK - I'm from England - and England famously has a lot of wet, rainy days, and not a lot of hot, sunny days. There are very few days in the year which are very hot and sunny in the UK. And so because of this weather that I'm used to for all of my childhood growing up, I have a…like an instinctual feeling when the weather is nice and sunny and hot. I feel necessary inside - I feel I feel an urge - I feel a motivation to go out and do something outside because the weather is good. This feeling happens because growing up in England there was there were not many pleasant days. There are not many good hot days. So it was important to enjoy and use those good weather days when they did come along.

However, I've been living abroad for a long time now. I lived in Thailand and now I live in Japan. And the weather in both of these countries is very different from England. In Thailand, of course, it was very, very hot almost every day. Every day would be hot and sunny and so every day I would have this feeling inside of me that I need to go outside and I need to make the most of the day. I need to enjoy the sun while it lasts even though I know that it will be sunny the next day and the next and the next and it's going to be sunny pretty much every day w-while I lived in Thailand I still had that feeling that urge to go outside because of growing up in England and not being able to enjoy sunny days on a regular basis.

I enjoy all types of weather, although in different ways: certainly I enjoy rain the best when I'm inside and looking out at the rain. That's a very pleasant feeling. I don't like having to go out and walk in the rain, but I'm sure that not many people do.

Here in Japan, we are lucky to have fairly comfortable weather year round. The summer is very hot and humid and that's not very comfortable, but it's still very beautiful and you can enjoy it if you plan your day and you plan your outfit and what you're going to be doing, it's easy to enjoy that hot weather. And likewise in the winter when it's getting much colder, as long as you prepare yourself for the weather with clothing or different items, it can be a really enjoyable day to be outside in the cold, in the snow and things like that. So I really like this variety of weather that I get living in Japan. I think I prefer having a variety of weather compared to a constant type of weather, like I had when I was living in Thailand before. Thailand, very, very beautiful and wonderful hot weather every day, but I think I prefer the variety of hot and cold and warm and cool weather that occurs here in Japan.

Have a think about your favourite type of weather and what you do to enjoy it the best. Maybe you're inside, maybe you're outside, but your favourite type of weather and what do you do to enjoy this type of weather?

Alright, that's enough for today's episode. Thank you very much for listening. I will see you next time. Goodbye.