00:01 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Tokyo. A question I get from so many people is how cold is Japan? And I don't know how to answer that. Sorry, I lost my voice a little bit on the last trip yesterday, but it's a good question and it's also kind of a silly one. In order to highlight this answer I need to talk a little bit about the geography and the topography of Japan. So bear with me.

00:27 John Daub: This is Japan. You can see it's actually not a small country. So when you say how cold is it in the winter? It can be very very cold and it could be like today. Actually, Tokyo is fairly warm, surprisingly so. If you look at the weather right now, it's 16 degrees Celsius, which is ridiculously warm for those who are in Fahrenheit. 62 degrees Fahrenheit in Tokyo. February 1st, 2024, which is pretty crazy. So, winter in Japan just kind of depends.

01:01 John Daub: Tokyo is sort of in the middle of everything. Sapporo up there in the north, you're gonna get a lot of snow. You're gonna have minus weather. You're gonna need a down jacket. It's pretty chilly up there most of the time. Look down at Okinawa. It's kind of like Florida. So Japan's got a huge range of temperatures. It's not the same.

01:23 John Daub: Let me also explain and go in a little bit deeper here. Here's the topography of Japan. In particular with the central region. And you can see Mount Fuji, that little pimple on the bottom of the screen in Shizuoka. But look at all the mountains in there. This creates some unusual weather. So when you say Japan, you got to think about this too. A lot of places that you might want to visit are in the mountains and they're gonna be much much colder.

01:48 John Daub: In fact, the coldest temperatures in Japan in the summer are at the top of Mount Fuji. That's 3,776 meters in the sky. On the Sea of Japan, the weather's typically gonna be cooler because the weather gets knocked down by the mountains. And then that kind of warms up Tokyo. So the weather that you get on the Sea of Japan side is not gonna be the same as what you get in Tokyo. It's based on topography.

02:17 John Daub: So now you get an idea in your head. It's not quite the same from one place to another. Despite the fact that Japan is actually, you know, on the map it looks like a small country. Japan is more of an east-west country than you think of a north and south. That also has some ramifications in the temperatures as well. From Tokyo to Kyushu, you're going west more than you're going north to south. So the temperature really is not too different, but when you go from Tokyo north to Tohoku, it is much different. It gets much different quicker, as well as the sunset and the sunrise times, for example. So it's also something that you definitely should consider when you're planning your trip.

03:37 John Daub: Let me go over some of the peak temperatures here. Let's look at the extremes, first of all, for each month in Japan. This goes all the way back to 1872. I don't know how accurate that is. But it gives you an idea of the lowest and the highest. This is from Wikipedia. Their source was the Japan Meteorological Agency, which is my authoritative source on earthquakes and whatnot. They also have a site in English, which you should bookmark if you're making a trip to Japan. It would be very useful.

04:11 John Daub: If you look in December, the record lows, minus 34.2, which is minus 29.6 Fahrenheit. February and January are the coldest months. That minus 41 was in Asahikawa. These are all in north Hokkaido. And in the summer months, you see minus 13, minus 6.9 in July. That's actually most likely at the tip of Mount Fuji. So this is where you're going to get the coldest, most extreme weather on the top there, because it's still like below zero up on the top of Fuji. Then you look at the extreme hot weather, and it gets pretty hot. The outlier of this entire map is actually May. There's a 39.5 degrees, 103 degrees Fahrenheit. That was in north Hokkaido, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around that. But this gives you an idea of how extreme on the scale that Japan can actually get, which is pretty extreme. It gets cold, like Canada cold up in Hokkaido. And it gets warm. It's pretty extreme. But it's also a little bit like a Florida warm down in Okinawa. So preparing a trip to Japan depends on exactly where you're going to go.

05:38 John Daub: Let's look at some of the places now. Here's the hot weather temperature. I want to highlight Saroma, Hokkaido in 2019, where it got to almost 40 degrees in May, which is so bizarre because that's really up there. This is the weather for Kochi. Kochi is down in Shikoku. That's more on the Pacific side, a little bit west of Tokyo. And you can see in December, January, February, the highs are around 60 degrees and the lows are around 35 degrees. It never really gets freezing down there because of the Pacific Ocean. And it doesn't rain a lot in the winter, which is a good reason to visit in the winter.

06:30 John Daub: This is Niigata on the Sea of Japan side. And you can see it is much colder. It's a little bit more north of Tokyo. And you can see the weather, the highs are around 8 degrees. Like 47 degrees? It gets down to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit with the low temperature. The low temperature is below zero. And that's 32 degrees for Fahrenheit. So, it's chilly. And there's a lot more rain. It rains a lot in the winter over on that side. And that rain is often snow, especially in the mountains.

07:07 John Daub: Here's Okinawa. This is more subtropical down in the southwest of Tokyo. And you can see it doesn't rain so much, maybe a third of the time. But the weathers are pretty warm comparatively. This is Japan. You can see it's at 21 degrees Celsius, which is like 70s, 80s. But it does get a little chilly at night. You want a light jacket. And this is the coldest it's going to get in Okinawa. We're going in February. We're going next week to Okinawa. So, I'll be able to report to you from Ishigaki-jima.

07:59 John Daub: And then, of course, there's Tokyo. And Tokyo in itself is, that's going to be the place where a lot of you are most impacted with because a lot of people coming through Tokyo. If you look at the temperature, like today, it's really warm. But let's look at the temperatures through the week. Let's start with today, February 1st, 2024. Tokyo is going to be a high of 17 degrees, which is like, I don't even know why I have a jacket on. I could have a t-shirt and shorts if I was Canadian. It's pretty warm. Okinawa is 24 degrees Celsius, or that's like 82 degrees Fahrenheit. It's pretty warm. And then look up on the top here at Hokkaido. It's 1 degrees Sapporo and minus 6, so they're going to be getting some snow up there, which is good because the snow festival's coming up. Tokyo is the hottest place in the country right now because of the mountains blocking the chill and the Pacific keeping it warm.

09:24 John Daub: Now let's look at a week from now. The weather's supposed to get a little bit cooler. That's the average for Tokyo, 10 degrees or 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Sapporo is up there on the top at 1, minus 8. It's the same. It's going to be cold. And then you see Okinawa, rainy, 21 degrees, 16 as a low, high chance of precipitation. It's impossible to say that Japan is cold. Because it's not. And it's impossible to say that Japan is hot because it's not. It's a really long country. Japan is such a long country to plan for a trip here is not easy. It just depends on where you want to go, what you want to see, if you're going to be outside or inside, if you're going to be in the cities, if you're going to be in the countryside, if you're going to be on the Sea of Japan side, if you're going to be on the Pacific side. It makes a huge difference in the weather. And how you'll be impacted.

10:26 John Daub: You get a better view of Tokyo right now. You can see there was some blue skies this morning. The clouds have come in. The wind has picked up. It's a little chillier. I think the warmest part was about an hour ago. But it's still fairly warm. It doesn't feel like February 1st. The weather changes just like anywhere else. So you're going to get like really warm weather. The average is about 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit for Tokyo. It's not that cold. It's like Washington, D.C. on a nice day. Maybe like southern Virginia. There are times though where it's going to get below zero. Just cold fronts will come in, dropping snow. But it never, ever lasts. Tokyo is always going to warm up again. And it's always going to be kind of like this, which is nice.

11:26 John Daub: And when it does snow, we call it Sno-Kyo. At least that's when it gets really, really snowy here. And Tokyo has a hard time dealing with the snow and the ice. Sapporo, on the other hand, has public salt places where you can dump salt on sidewalks and crosswalks and stuff where the public can do it so that nobody slips. And residents do a pretty good job of making the streets safe in Sapporo.

11:54 John Daub: Now I want to show you my experience. This was about four years ago in the middle of the year. And I'm going to show you the temperature in Rikubetsu, which is the coldest town in Japan. It was minus 25 in February, which is almost four years ago to the day. Five years ago, I think it was. 2018. This is my birthday, by the way. Yeah, it was February 8th, 2018. And you can see this is the city, the center of the town, Rikubetsu. And they have a thermometer. They take pride. It says Japan's coldest town. And if you pan down there, you're going to see the temperature. And it's minus 25 degrees Celsius. Like minus 19 degrees Fahrenheit, which is ridiculously cold, unless you're Canadian or Norwegian. And then you're like laughing like, that's not cold. But it was freaking cold. It's like a freezer.

12:59 John Daub: I went outside. I was staying at this place. It's actually a hotel. Inside there, a very warm hotel, thank goodness. But this is what the town looks like. There's a convenience store, a Seicomart near there. Everything is just frozen over. And if I breathe, you can see the steam coming out. It's cold. I needed a balaclava, really. You need a hat like this. You have to cover all of your extremities. My nose hurt. You really need to cover your nose. Maybe even have goggles if you got them. And Okinawa, you probably could have shorts on. You probably want to dress up in a jacket at the nighttime, light jacket. It's comfortable. And that's what I'll be able to report to you when I go down to Okinawa next week.

13:45 John Daub: I'll take some questions if you have anything. Because right now, we have to celebrate Space Boat, which is taking advantage of this warm February. This is, by the way, the last day to get this boat. This is a postcard. Today's the last day for the postcard club. And I put the one with the toys on there. And that's one of my favorite postcards for the last several years. It's a really nice one. Patreon resets in about three hours. And that postcard will be history. So get it while it's hot.

14:56 John Daub: Thanks a lot for watching this episode on the weather. Leave a comment below if you have anything to add to this. I love the comments. This is social media. So we get a chance to exchange what's the weather like where you are in Japan. If anyone going out to the Sapporo Snow Festival, maybe write up and give us a weather report. It's really cold. But there's the weather from Tokyo. Mostly cloudy. Kind of warm. Really nice. My voice will get better tomorrow. I was screaming at the end of the video. I was screaming at the navigation system. Google Navi made me miss an exit and it took me 30 minutes out of the way yesterday. Anyways, take care, guys. I'll see you again tomorrow. Minus 25 is respectable. All right, everybody.