This has been folk knowledge in Japan for thousands of years. Rice paddies are traditionally planted in places with a propensity to lightning storms, a fact so well known that it reduces land values in suburbs built on old paddy land (there are other downsides to that land, but this is one).
Also, the word for "thunder" (雷) is written as "rain" (雨) over a "rice paddy" (田), and the word for "lightning" (稲妻) is "rice plant's (稲) wife (妻)".
Hey, do you know about what scent is used in mineral water in Japan. Our friend gave us some last year and we were amazed how primal and fresh it smelled, trying to trace it all the time.
From the description it could be petrichor, but we had this similar smell once coming off ocean island once (Kawau, NZ) so we not sure
Nice! And speaking of etymology, my favourite trivia from the article: The word was coined from Greek petros, meaning "stone", and ichor, meaning "the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods". I always wondered what the second half meant.
I'm usually a lurker and rarely comment but yours was such a nice little informal comment that I had to say something. Thanks for bringing a smile to my face :)
Note that the "glyph origin" section describes 雷 as an ancient simplification of the phono-semantic compound 靁, where 畾 indicates the pronunciation. Any relation to rice paddies is probably a post-hoc rationalization.
This is actually common, folks think Kanji are random strokes, but they tell stories and tend to make sense. Understanding the relations makes it easy to remember.
Also, the word for "thunder" (雷) is written as "rain" (雨) over a "rice paddy" (田), and the word for "lightning" (稲妻) is "rice plant's (稲) wife (妻)".