It's Snowing On Mt. Fuji

About

It's Snowing On Mt. Fuji is a catchphrase started by a Game Grumps segment in which Dan Avidan botches the final line of a haiku with, "It's snowing on Mt. Fuji," even though that line has seven syllables (instead of the correct five) and had nothing to do with the preceding two lines. The line became a prevalent reference among the fandom and has featured in multiple parodies and memes of bad poetry online.

Origin

On January 6th, 2015, Game Grumps uploaded an episode of their Sonic Boom playthrough.^[1] The episode opens with Dan Avidan attempting a haiku:

"Sonic the Hedgehog
You are the best game ever
It's snowing on Mt. Fuji"

Avidan immediately realized he botched the haiku, as "it's snowing on Mt. Fuji" has seven syllables instead of five, which would be needed to adhere to the "5-7-5" rule of a haiku. Nevertheless, he and Arin Hanson joke that all haikus should end with the phrase and riff on haikus for several minutes. The episode gained over 995,000 views in nine years (shown below).

Spread

The line quickly spread throughout the Game Grumps fandom in multiple video parodies. On September 17th, 2015, YouTuber Lightbox posted an animation of the moment, gaining over 90,000 views in eight years (shown below, left). On September 7th, YouTuber Dio Brando edited several lyrics in songs by Avidan's band, Ninja Sex Party, to end with "It's snowing on Mt. Fuji," gaining over 5,500 views in a similar timeframe.

Furthermore, the line "It's snowing on Mt. Fuji" became a common way to signal someone was intentionally writing a parody poem over the following years online. On February 21st, 2020, the subreddit /r/itssnowingonmtfuji^[3] launched, devoted to posting "odd poems." The subreddit gained over 2,000 subscribers in four years.

On October 12th, 2018, Louie Zong used it in a Twitter post^[4] that gained over 50 retweets and 1,100 likes in five and a half years (shown below, left). On October 12th, 2022, Redditor Nanoespectro posted a parody haiku in /r/pokemongo^[2] that included the line, gaining over 120 points in 18 months (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References