Best time to visit Japan

Spring turns on 10 days

March and April are what almost everyone aims for, and the reasons are good ones: the temperature climbs fast and the cherry trees flower. The trap is assuming the window is wide. The cycle always runs the same way, and only its start date moves: bare branches, then the first flowers, then peak bloom about a week later, then the petals drop over the following week and green leaves take their place. In Tokyo, that's about 10 days. Show up a week early and you get bare branches; a week late and you get leaves. The regional averages are further down this page.

The last week of March is also the end of the Japanese school and financial year. Companies move staff from one city to another in the same few days, and trains and hotels fill with Japanese travelers before any foreign visitor gets near them, which is why late March books out on a domestic calendar rather than a tourist one. On April 1, the entire country changes year on the same morning.

Our take: if your dates can't land on the bloom, May beats April. Twenty to twenty-five degrees. Prices drop once Golden Week ends on May 5.

Summer splits the country in two

From mid-June to mid-September the southern half is hot and humid enough that walking Kyoto for a day becomes an ordeal. The north gets off lightly: the Japan Meteorological Agency does not declare a rainy season for Hokkaido at all, the only region in the country with no such declaration, and July there is the good season. This is when the north-south gap earns its keep.

Summer is also festival season, and a festival takes over the whole city. Gion Matsuri runs the entire month of July in Kyoto, with its two float parades on the 17th and the 24th. Pack light clothes and something to change into. Indoor air conditioning sits around 28°C (82°F), not 20°C (68°F), because of the government's Cool Biz campaign.

Autumn gives you weeks, spring gives you days

Both seasons sweep the country in about six weeks, blossom from south to north and color the other way. The difference is what happens once it reaches you. In one place the blossom holds for around ten days and punishes you for missing them, while the color holds for weeks, which is why an autumn trip forgives a booking made on the wrong dates and a spring trip does not.

November is, along with winter, the driest month in Tokyo. The sky is often a hard clean blue. In Kyoto the colors peak in the last week of the month, give or take a few days depending on the year. The big temples open at night then, with a ticket separate from the daytime one and queues that form before dark. Get there at opening or don't bother.

The downside is well known: November is also the most expensive month of the year in Kyoto, and the first to sell out in ryokan inns.

Winter is the cheapest season

December to February is the cheapest and quietest Japan you'll find. Tokyo rarely drops below 0°C (32°F), and Mount Fuji is visible from the city far more often than in spring, while the north is another story entirely, with some of the heaviest snowfall in the inhabited world and a ski season that holds from December to March.

One detail ruins trips: from December 29 to January 3, a lot of small restaurants and neighborhood shops close, and long-distance trains are full.

Worth knowing, and it catches most people out. The sun sets very early in autumn and winter. From late October to January it's gone between 4:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. Start early if you plan on rural areas, where everything closes with the daylight.