June: the beginning of rainy season
June is not so pleasant month for Japanese locals, because most part of Japan get visited by a rainy season called “TSUYU”, literally this means “plum rain”, because it coincides with the season of plums ripening. The rainy season is caused by the collision of cold northerly and warm southerly air masses, which results in a relatively stable bad weather over the Japanese archipelago for several weeks.
In most of Japan, the rainy season lasts from the beginning of June to mid July, while it affects the islands of Okinawa about one month earlier. Only Japan’s northernmost main island Hokkaido and the Ogasawara island get less affected by the rainy season.
During the rainy season it does not rain every day. For example, the probability of rain on a given day in Tokyo is 45% during the peak of the rainy season, while the probability of sunny weather is 27%. Of the rainy days, half see only light rain, while the other half see more considerable amounts of precipitation. And the high humidity with hot temperature makes rainy season worse. The average humidity goes up to 78% in June and 80% in July.
Due to the bad weather, rainy season is not the most suitable season for leisure traveling to Japan, though hydrangea is beautiful in several places such as in Kamakura. On the other hand, it’s good season for your business trip. It’s just before Japanese peak summer travel season, staff member of Japanese travel companies has relatively time available. So several national tourist organizations organize their sales functions such as roadshow in this period.
