思ったより (more than expected).

My new favorite phrase is 思ったより (omotta yori), "more than one (had) thought/expected". (Just came across it on Duolingo, which I frequent for a bunch of languages, although I started for and still practice Japanese, and which I recommend, not least for its item-specific discussion spaces.) It's a simple thing, but I haven't come across it before, at least in studies, and it's a concise and elegant way of expressing that surprise. Feels lighter than, as in English, having to inflect the what as a comparative; you can just add the phrase to whatever the situation is. 思ったより面白いです。"It's more interesting than I'd expected." 思ったより高かったよ. "Dude, I didn't think it would cost that much."* 思うよりも役に立つだろうね。

*In more exact/"correct" English, 思ったより高い, I didn't think it would cost this much; 思ったより高かった, I hadn't thought it would cost that much.

雷鳴.

Thunder today. Funny, that the second kanji of a thunderclap (雷鳴, raimei) is 鳴, which also can be a chime or even a bird's cry (to chirp/sing/ring / make a small sound, 鳴る). The parts are literally a mouth (口) and a bird (鳥). Kaminari (雷) is a pretty unprepossessing kanji and might suggest a retro-fit from Chinese writing to a preexisting Japanese word—presumably related to kami (神), gods/divinity, as the concept often is—a cry of the gods—if the older form weren't 靁, same rain (雨) but with three rice fields (田) vs one. (Does this 雨 count as 雨かんむり?)

Interesting: Seems 雷 also carries a kun'yomi of ikazuchi—derivation? From Goo.jp: 「厳 (いか) つ霊 (ち) 」の意。「つ」は助詞》かみなり。なるかみ。《季 夏》 Meaning ika (厳) tsu chi (霊), つ being a particle. kaminari. narukami. (seasonal word for summer)

雷に
松籟どっと
乱れ落つ
—茅舎

ikadzuki ni / shourai dotto / midareotsu
in thunder, a sudden wind disturbs the pine trees; [needles] fall
—KAWABATA Bousha
(ish)

Speaking of that 乱れ落つ verb situation:

春の宵
身より紅紐
乱れ落つ
—三好潤子

haru no yoi / miyori beni? himo? / midareotsu
—MIYOSHI Midori (Junko)

Hmm. More to learn about this one and 紅紐. Some sources say that evening hours in spring suggest dropping a boring lover. ?

I'll have to look further into how to distinguish lightning from thunder; in Eng there's little if any overlap between the words.

お風呂 in Portuguese?

I have on a TV episode that's in Portuguese, and someone has just referred to a hot tub as the ofurô. Might this be one of the famous vocabulary crossovers between Japanese (お風呂) and Portuguese? Maybe in this case the flow was not from the Jesuits but toward them.