We don't see a whole lot of rainbows in Tokyo.

The other day I was talking about "all", "every", and "whole". When we were discussing it in class, two idioms using "whole" came to mind (definitions from Edict).

• 胸に浮かぶ (むねにうかぶ) (exp,vi,v5b) to come to mind; to pop into one's head;
• 頭に浮かぶ (あたまにうかぶ) (exp,vi,v5b) to come to mind; to pop into one's head;
• 思い当る (おもいあたる) (v5r,vi) to come to mind; to recall; to think of;

Those two idioms are "a whole lot of __(n)__" and "the whole lot of __(n)__".

• a whole lot of __(n)__ = many __(n)__ <- stronger than "a lot of"
• the whole lot of __(n)__ = all of the __(n)__ <- a casual idiom

For example:

• Today, there were a whole lot of people at Nihonbashi because of a festival.
• Because of that, when I went into Family Mart to get a rice ball filled with sour plum, the whole lot of them were gone.

The difference between these two meanings shows us why you should be careful about articles like "a" and "the".

On Friday afternoon, when I came out of my Japanese lesson, I saw a whole lot of people on the corner. The whole lot of them were holding their cell phones up into the air. I didn't understand why until I looked at the sky. They were all taking pictures of a beautiful rainbow!

I'm looking forward to seeing the whole lot of you in class soon.