We show that the Kobayashi-Maskawa (KM) parametrization of the 3 X 3 lepton flavor mixing matrix is a useful language to describe the phenomenology of neutrino oscillations. In particular, it provides us with a convenient way to link the genuine flavor mixing parameters (theta_1, theta_2, theta_3 and delta_KM) to their effective counterparts in matter (tilde{theta}_1, tilde{theta}_2, tilde{theta}_3 and tilde{delta}_KM). We rediscover the Toshev-like relation sin tilde{delta}_KM sin 2tilde{theta}_2 = sin delta_KM sin 2theta_2 in the KM parametrization. We make reasonable analytical approximations to the exact relations between the genuine and matter-corrected flavor mixing parameters in two different experimental scenarios: (a) the neutrino beam energy E is above O(1) GeV and (b) E is below O(1) GeV. As an example, the probability of u_mu -> u_e oscillations and CP-violating effects are calculated for the upcoming NOvA and Hyper-K experiments.
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