Hokudai/Cast 73:

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Hokudai/Cast 73 deals with floods and words related to floods. There are flood gates and flash floods; there are flood plains and flood waters. But there are no flood planes. Flood gates are gates on a dam that keep the water from rushing into the river and flooding towns and cities downstream. Sometimes these gates are opened to make a controlled flood, to control the amount of water. You can also use flood gates to mean letting anything in a large amount out. For example:

If we allow 18-year-olds the right to vote, we are opening the floodgates of voter fraud.

Flash floods are floods that happen very quickly. Flash means quickly; for example, the flood was over in a flash. The movie was over in a flash. Flash floods catch people unaware. Many floods happen slowly. It will rain a little over a long period of time and the amount of water in the river will increase and increase over hours and hours. Flash floods are caused by a lot of rain in a short period of time.

Flood plains are where the river floods. If you look at a river, you will see the river and on both sides of the river is low-lying land. This low-lying land is the flood plain. Usually, people don't want to build their homes on a flood plain. I think people wouldn't mind building a home on a flood plane, though. They could fly away from the flood! Imagine having a flying home.

Flood waters means the water brought by the flood. Often you will hear newscasters saying, "The flood waters have risen six meters!"

If you see The Flood (with capital letters T and F) you will know that the writer is talking about the Biblical flood from Noah's time. This happened a long, tong time ago and is when, according to the Bible, all the people in the world were killed (except Noah and his family) by a world-wide flood. That would have been a good time to have had a flood plane, don't you think?

Music is by The KeathMoon - a Japanese indies band -

which can be found at GarageBandUsersClub.

Additional music is by Manzi.

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Hokudai/Cast: Your fun-service podcast for learning Japanese, English, and Chinese.