Too hot for you? Probably.
I recommend to wannabe Japan visitors online that avoiding Japanese summer outright is the best. For most Westerners, used to cool, temperate-zone weather, this period of the year is when you'll feel like you are melting. It doesn't even cool down much in the evenings!
[A hot, very wet evening at a small alleyway in Kyoto, lined with restaurants and bars]
Summer in Japan starts with our "rainy season" in June (about three weeks of near-daily rain, high humidity and increasingly high temperatures), followed by more humid, hotter weather through August into September... including an increased chance of typhoons hitting the mainland anytime July thru September.
[Typhoon passage a bit south of my house, August 2024]
And hey, I hear you love big crowds, right?
The Golden Week holiday (the last week of April through the first week of May) is one of the three times a year that truly massive numbers of Japanese travel back-and-forth, crisscrossing their own country on domestic travel.
[Most of these people were domestic Japanese tourists. An event at Nankin-machi (Kobe Chinatown)]
Result? In every major city (Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, etc.) hotel prices will be raised to as much as four times their ordinary cost, while Shinkansen and airplane tickets across the country are sold out weeks in advance. To add to the "fun," fine restaurants all boost their prices significantly, and despite their own price boosts, nice hotels everywhere and especially at onsen (hot spring resorts) are often booked solid.
The other two times to avoid are New Year's (last week of December through first week of January), and to a lesser extent the O-Bon season in mid-August.
Japan is an awesome place to visit... from September through May.
In mid-September the summer weather finally starts to break, cooling gradually, with hotter days still occasionally happening through October. As I write this Oct 27, the temperature here in Kobe was "only" 25 degrees Celsius high. November continues the cooling trend as the deciduous trees change color wildly and finally shed their leaves.
[Japanese maples in mid-change at Tofuku-ji temple in Kyoto. From one of my tours.]
Few foreign people visit Japan in the winter for anything but skiing resorts, and that's such a shame. Japanese temples and shrines look glorious with a light coating of snow on them.
[Winter snap at a local shrine here in Kobe]
In the springtime, of course, the challenge is to try and capture the elusive "sakura" flowers in bloom. Usually they are blooming at the end of March through mid-April, but sometimes recent weather can shift that several weeks either direction! Don't make expensive plans that depend on the sakura. They often let people down.
[Sakura (cherry blossoms) at Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto]
And so the cycle of the year turns again, as I once again remind people to avoid the Japanese summertime... if possible.