The biggest thing about crazy weather in Japan is definitely the rainy season where I think it's usually in May or June sometime in the summer. It just rains basically every day minus a day or two out of the entire week. Take my advice, don't go out into a typhoon or try to run. You won't be able to go very far and you'll actually lose your footing too.
It's hotter than the Philippines and I was surprised because I came from a humid country and it's also hot during summer in the Philippines but then it's hotter in Japan so you have to prepare for that. Also, winter is so cold so you have to prepare coats and thermal undergarments because you really need that. But the weather is not as crazy as other countries because they don't have lots of storms but yeah that's the weather in Japan.
Rainy season was crazy, which is generally in the spring, like May, you'll basically just get a month of rain. Then you just have nasty humidity for the rest of the summer, just sweltering. In Nagoya, they call it mushi, like it's a mushy heat, but it's like they actually say that in Japanese, mushiatsu. So we were just used to just sweat and sweat, and if you put on a rain jacket when it rained, then when you took it off, you were just soaked in sweat, and so it didn't matter if it was rain or sweat, you were just always covered in sweat and rain, one or the other. But we did get some winters with snow. It wasn't a ton, but every now and again, we'd get a couple inches of snow, which made it difficult for our bikes.
There is a lot of rain in Japan and you'll wear a raincoat which you'll call a kappa and a lot of times the rain will sometimes even get like through your kappa but it's worth it. There will be typhoons, there was an earthquake, enjoy the rain.
One time my companion and I, we were out biking in a town that was about an hour away, and it started to drizzle, and we're like, oh crap, we don't have our rain jackets. So we started to ride back to our apartment, and out of nowhere, it just started downpouring really hard, and so we had to bike about an hour through torrential rains. By the time we got back, we were absolutely drenched, but we were laughing about it. We had a good time, but yeah, no, it can get really rainy. And then depending on what area you're in, it can get really cold and get extremely hot, and so you just got to be aware of the weather and plan accordingly.
So if you've looked up pictures of Sapporo, then you notice that like one of the first things that comes up under images is just snow. And that's essentially like what Sapporo is like in the winter, or like six months out of the year, because it averages about six feet of snow every year. And that may be an underestimate because I was in some areas where it would snow six feet in like a week. Yeah. But yeah, so that was really crazy. It got to the point where like walking on the sidewalk, you can even see the cars because the snow piles are so high. And often like you would go weeks without being able to see the sidewalk, just because of the snow would be covering everything. So that's pretty crazy.
It is so snowy and so cold, like more than half the year. And when you're walking, a lot of times snow will come up to like at least halfway up your calf-ish a lot of the time, depending on where you are. And there's ice everywhere because they don't salt to the ground, they just throw gravel. And it does accumulate.
In Okinawa, it's a big tropical island, and so during the typhoon season, there'd be crazy rains, crazy winds, you could see the rains going sideways. It's not really weather, but I also served in Kagoshima, which has a volcano right next to it, and so in the summer especially, all the ash is blown towards where you are, and so every day, you'd wake up and your bike's covered in ash, and when you're biking, you taste ash in your mouth, and it'd get in your eye. It's kind of sucked, but it's fun.
Japan's weather? A lot of rain. It pretty much will rain every day so you better get yourself a good raincoat, which they do call kappa. Don't be surprised if you feel any earthquakes or experience any typhoons that come along because they do get a lot of those. I felt a couple of earthquakes and actually was in the middle of a huge typhoon. But rain, typhoon, and earthquakes are the kind of crazy weather you'll experience while you're in Japan.
The weather in Japan is insane. I just remember especially when it's super hot like during those months, I just would wake up sweating. I would like just be wet the whole day. Just drenched in sweat. Also the typhoons are crazy. There was this one time where there was a typhoon and our umbrella broke and we were just getting washed. There's so much rain. It was windy and our whole clothes was just wet. So there are typhoons and the heat is very crazy. Yeah, I think those two are the most like crazy weather that I could think of that we had on like a daily basis. When it's cold, it's cold too. It's like the humid goes through your clothing.
There's definitely some times of year where there's crazy weather with typhoon season and things like that where I remember one of my areas called Kawagoe we'd walk and it was so bad it was like up to our knees the water we're just waiting out there but it was like June it's usually early summer when it hits and or sometimes even late summer August things like that where there's some really heavy rain I'd get ready for super super hot summers. It's pretty toasty sometimes bring a lot of short sleeves in the winter because it's so humid throughout the year even in the winter if you go up north into like Niigata it's gonna be really cold because the humidity the wind is just gonna go right through your clothes so I definitely get ready for that but as far as crazy weather mainly just a lot of rain. You have the choice if you can wear rain clothes and then you can get soaked in sweat or you can not wear your rain clothes and then get soaked in rain so it's kind of a 50-50 shot with kind of whatever you're feeling.
I grew up in Utah where it is very dry. Let me tell you, humidity is the worst. It doesn't matter if it's hot outside, the humidity gets you everywhere. You can't lay in the cool shade and feel cool. You need to have the humidity removed out of your room in order to feel like you're cooling down. That's all I can really say about the weather. We have the seasons, we have all the flowers. I speak because I live in Japan, but the humidity is going to kill me. It does every summer.
Typhoons are probably the most common like crazy weather that you could experience as well as earthquakes, tsunamis. I never saw a tsunami when I was serving there, but we all know about like the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. But it rains a lot, so remember to, you know, pack for like rain boots or something. When you get there, you'll buy a kappa, which is it's like a weather poncho because most of the month of July, June-July, is just straight rain. So it rains a lot in Japan and has some really awesome weather. Yeah.
During typhoon season, there's always lots of rain, lots of wind. And then besides that, the earthquakes definitely. Once in a while, you'll just wake up in the middle of the night because of an earthquake. It happens every once in a while, but it's pretty crazy.
The weather in Japan can be really, really crazy. It's always super humid there, as it's an island. So whether it's summer or winter, you will feel the weather going through you. So you'll feel really either hot or cold, depending on the season. But, yeah, there's also a lot of crazy rain, especially during typhoon season. But depending on the area, it can happen anywhere, or at any time of the year. I served in an area called Joetsu, which had crazy weather. It had snow because it was Niigata-ken, and it also had crazy rain pretty much every other day, maybe sometimes every day. And so you're definitely going to have to prepare for the weather.
When it's hot, it's very, very, very hot. And when it's cold, it's like below-freezing, sub-zero cold, like the most snow you've ever seen. At least the most snow I've ever seen. I'm from South Carolina. The good news is that it kind of like depends on what area you're in and how much of that you're going to get. But if you're in the Nagano area or the Kanazawa, those tend to get a lot of snow in the winter. And then if you're in Aichi Prefecture, which is like anything like in the Nagoya area and southward, that's going to be really, really hot. And it can be humid as well. But also prepare for a rainy season from July to like, oh no, October. It rains a ton during that time period. So be prepared for that.
It rains all the time, and it has actually quite a lot of natural disasters. For example, the last month we actually had like four or five natural disasters. We had an earthquake, we had two typhoons, we had a massive flood, and we had a heat wave that actually killed a couple of people. But I wouldn't get too worried about it. I would just get prepared for some crazy weather.
The weather in the Tokyo area usually isn't too bad. Up in the northern part, in Niigata Prefecture, it can get really cold in the winter. It snows a ton. Closer to Tokyo, farther south, it's usually not too bad. In the summer it gets very hot and in the winter it gets very cold, but it's mostly because of the humidity. In the summer it's hot because of the humidity, so you have to stay hydrated. There are lots of people that get heat stroke and that sort of thing. Also, there's a ton of rain in Japan. There were a few periods of several weeks where I did not see the sun, just because it was overcast or it was constantly raining, essentially.
The weather in Sapporo is awesome. It's cold and snowy. So much snow. Like, depending on where you are, you'll see snow from October until April, and it will pile up. It's really interesting, because they don't like salt the streets and stuff like that, they just throw gravel everywhere. So it doesn't really melt the ice. So the ice will accumulate on the sidewalks, and it will get like six inches to a foot thick. So be prepared for that. And when the snow comes down, sometimes it just snows in normal flakes, sometimes it snows in cotton ball sized lumps, and one of those things comes and hits you in the eye, melts, and then refreezes, and freezes your eyelashes together. It's awesome.
Way in the south, you've got these nice temperate places that aren't very cold during the winter, but extremely hot and humid during the summer. And up north in Hiroshima, you have places that snow in the winter and are pretty cold. So there's a lot of variation. The summer I was, the summer is kind of brutal if you're in Okinawa, or even if you're in like, Kyushu, it can be very hot and then suddenly there's like this rainy season part of the summer. So the weather's just really all over the place. Also sometimes there's typhoons. One time we had a typhoon day because the weather was so crazy we had to stay inside. So yeah, a lot of crazy weather. It's all over the place, but it's a good time.
The weather in Sapporo is crazy. As you can imagine, it's Japan, so it's surrounded by sea, so you get a lot of precipitation, a lot of rain in the summer, and a lot of snow in the winter. And I just remember it would snow for days and days and days, and they would have entire crews out there, especially in the big cities, just cleaning up the snow off the streets with these huge dump trucks. They would shove it all to the side to the point where there was a huge like 15 to 20 foot wall of snow between the sidewalk and the street. It got enormous, and they also had a lot of cars slipping around the roads all of the time. You had to be really careful, especially in the winter with the precipitation and the coldness.
The whole island of Hokkaido is basically Japanese Siberia. They have the most amazing winter festivals. Castles, they make life-size castles out of snow and ice when they stream lights through them. They have these incredible skiers and stuff and events. It's where they had the Olympics one year, the Winter Olympics. But it gets so cold. You'll be amazed by how cold it is. I remember it being negative 15 degrees Celsius at the afternoon. One day. That was the warmest time of the day. It is cold. Be prepared for utter cold during the winter. And lots and lots of snow. Sometimes three feet at night. Or white-outs even. I had Sorrel boots, four layers of socks, and I still had to thaw my feet out every night during the wintertime. It was painful. Be prepared.
The weather definitely is crazy over there. I only know this in Celsius but I know the coldest that I experienced, at least outside, was negative 27 in a place called Kitami and you get this sensation in your nostrils that you could tell that your inside nostrils are freezing and I mean there's icicles out you know just being formed out off of people's roofs, crazy long ones, almost the ones that could reach reach the ground.
Weather in Tokyo can be super hot in the summer and really cold in the winter. One time I was riding my chitensha, my bicycle, in the winter and it was snowing and it was a wet snow and we'd been riding a long time and I had gloves on but they were just like cotton gloves and so the the wetness was just soaking right through them. So we went into a convening nearby a 7-eleven and I bought some work gloves to put over the top of my other gloves to help keep my hands a little bit warm.
Typhoons, basically the same thing as a hurricane, but they call them typhoons there. They come, there's like typhoon seasons when they'll come. It's basically just a lot of wind, a lot of rain, but those can get pretty crazy. Also during rainy season, that's out of nowhere, it'll just drench you. Lots and lots of rain, so definitely good rain gear is essential, but the weather there, it's definitely super humid all the time. So you could, there's, like I said, randomly you could have rain come. I've had hail just hit us out of nowhere sometimes.