Tokyo Weather by Month: What Each Season Actually Does to Your Apartment

Last reviewed 19 Oct 2026 · 19 min read

Every relocation guide to Tokyo covers Tokyo weather by month in some form. Most of them are written for tourists: pack a light jacket for spring, bring an umbrella in June, expect fireworks-festival heat in August. That is not what you need to know if you are about to sign a two-year lease.

What actually matters to a renter is different. It is what each season does to the building you live in. Humidity above 70% for six weeks straight grows mold behind your futon. A single-pane window loses enough heat overnight to bead with condensation by morning. A typhoon that never makes landfall can still flood a ground-floor unit two wards away from where it crosses the coast.

We have handled move-ins, lease renewals and the occasional water-damage claim across four full Tokyo years. This guide is built from Japan Meteorological Agency data, not travel-blog impressions, and it is organized the way a renter actually experiences the calendar: by what you will need to manage in your apartment, month by month.

We also went looking for what Japanese residents actually say about their own climate, rather than relying on what English-language guides assume. The two pictures line up more than they diverge, but where they do diverge, that gap is often the single most useful thing in this guide, and we call it out explicitly each time it comes up.

We are not going to tell you Tokyo has four distinct, evenly balanced seasons. It has one long humid stretch, a short violent storm season, a dry cold snap, and about six good weeks on either side. Plan your apartment search around that, not around the cherry blossoms.

Hottest month	August, average high 31.3°C
Coldest month	January, average low 1.2°C
Wettest month	September, average 224.9mm
Rainy season (tsuyu)	Early June to mid/late July
Typhoon season peak	August and September
Annual rainfall	1,598mm
Best prepared for	A dry, well-ventilated unit above ground level
Catches renters off guard	Winter heating bills, not summer air conditioning

Quick Answer

Tokyo's weather is not evenly difficult. It is difficult in four specific, predictable windows, and each one stresses a different part of your apartment.

June and July bring six to seven weeks of humidity averaging 75 to 76%, the exact range mold needs to take hold in closets, behind furniture and along window frames. July through September is hot enough that air conditioning stops being optional, and most rental units run it for three to four months a year. Winter is colder than the temperature alone suggests, because most Tokyo apartments still have single-pane, aluminum-frame windows, so heating costs, not cooling costs, are what actually strain a typical household's electricity bill. August and September also carry the bulk of Japan's typhoon activity, and the risk is not evenly spread across the city: a handful of low-lying eastern wards sit below sea level and carry a flood risk that the rest of Tokyo simply does not.

None of this is a reason to avoid Tokyo. It is a reason to ask better questions before you sign. That is what the rest of this guide sets up.

Tokyo's Climate by Month: What the Data Actually Shows

Skip the "four beautiful seasons" framing. Tokyo's climate runs on two real seasons, tsuyu and typhoon season, bookended by two shorter mild stretches that most renters barely think about.

The Japan Meteorological Agency's 30-year averages (1991 to 2020) for central Tokyo put the annual average temperature at 15.8°C and total annual rainfall at 1,598mm, spread unevenly across the year rather than as a steady drizzle.

Month	Avg. High	Avg. Low	Rainfall	Avg. Humidity
January	9.8°C	1.2°C	60mm	51%
February	10.9°C	2.1°C	57mm	52%
March	14.2°C	5.0°C	116mm	57%
April	19.4°C	9.8°C	134mm	62%
May	23.6°C	14.6°C	140mm	68%
June	26.1°C	18.5°C	168mm	75%
July	29.9°C	22.4°C	156mm	76%
August	31.3°C	23.5°C	155mm	74%
September	27.5°C	20.3°C	225mm	75%
October	22.0°C	14.8°C	235mm	71%
November	16.7°C	8.8°C	96mm	64%
December	12.0°C	3.8°C	58mm	56%

Source: Japan Meteorological Agency, 30-year climate normals for Tokyo (1991 to 2020). These pages are published in Japanese.

March and April are the easiest months to move: mild, drier than what follows, and before the market gets crowded with the April fiscal-year relocation rush. May is the last comfortable month before humidity climbs past 65% and stays there for five straight months. October and November cool off fast and rainfall drops, which is why so many leases quietly get renewed in autumn rather than fought over.

The real story is the middle of the table. From June through October, Tokyo runs at 71 to 76% average humidity with only brief breaks, and that single number explains more about apartment-hunting in Tokyo than anything else in this table.

Spring and Autumn: The Weeks Nobody Complains About

Spring has one complication that the temperature and humidity columns do not show: 花粉症, seasonal pollen allergy, which peaks from February through April for cedar and into May for cypress. It creates a real housing tension, because the instinct during the year's most pleasant weather is to fling every window open, and the one month that advice actually works against you is the one where pollen counts are highest. Renters with allergies do better prioritizing a unit with a good entryway for changing clothes and an air purifier over one with especially large windows facing a tree-lined street.

Autumn is close to the ideal moving season on paper: humidity drops from the mid-70s to the mid-60s by November, rainfall falls off sharply after the September peak, and temperatures stay mild well into November. The one caveat is that autumn sits at the tail end of typhoon season, so a storm can still reach Tokyo as late as October even as the daily weather feels settled. Neither season carries a housing cost the way summer and winter do. They are simply the months where the building you chose matters least.

The Rainy Season: Why So Many Tokyo Apartments Smell of Mold by July

Tsuyu is not a rain event. It is a humidity plateau lasting five to seven weeks. Humidity, not rainfall total, is what damages a building.

The Japan Meteorological Agency's confirmed 30-year average has the Kanto-Koshin region's rainy season starting around 7 June and ending around 19 July. During that window, average humidity in Tokyo sits at 75 to 76%, day after day, with little of the dry recovery time a building needs between wet spells. Mold needs roughly 20 to 30°C and humidity above about 70% to establish itself, and tsuyu delivers both conditions simultaneously for over a month straight.

Japanese rental-industry guidance treats this as routine rather than alarming: keep indoor humidity in the 40 to 60% range, run a dehumidifier or circulating fan through the wettest weeks, and physically pull furniture away from exterior walls so air can move behind it. Japanese apartment interiors are built with this expectation baked in. Closets (oshiire) commonly get bamboo matting laid under the futon specifically so air can circulate underneath, and many rental listings still market a south-facing aspect partly on the basis that it dries out faster after tsuyu.

What we hear from English-language forums and new arrivals is a different reaction entirely: genuine surprise that a modern city can feel, in their words, like being sealed inside a dehumidifier for two months straight. That gap is not really a disagreement about the weather. It is a gap in expectations. Japanese guidance treats tsuyu mold prevention as a known seasonal chore, on the same footing as changing a smoke detector battery, while most renters arriving from drier climates have never had to think about humidity as a maintenance category at all.

The practical fix is not complicated, but it has to start before the humidity does, not after mold has already appeared on a wall. A cheap plug-in hygrometer, checked once a day through June and July, does more to prevent a mold problem than any single cleaning product, simply because it tells you when the 70% threshold has actually been crossed rather than leaving it to guesswork.

Once mold has set into fabric or wallpaper, no amount of ventilation reverses it. Prevention during the five weeks of tsuyu is the only version of this problem worth solving.

Summer Humidity and What It Actually Does to Your Air Conditioning Bill

By the time tsuyu ends, the heat doesn't ease off. It just changes character. That is when air conditioning shifts from a comfort setting to a running cost.

July averages a high of 29.9°C with humidity still at 76%. August is hotter still, 31.3°C average high, and Tokyo regularly posts days above 35°C during the second half of the month. Japan's Ministry of Environment has recommended a 28°C indoor cooling temperature since its 2005 Cool Biz campaign, paired with lighter clothing rather than a colder room, treated as a guideline rather than a fixed rule. Japanese energy-efficiency industry estimates commonly cited alongside the campaign put the saving from each additional degree of cooling restraint at roughly 13% less electricity for that appliance. Run your unit at 25°C instead of 28°C through a Tokyo summer and the difference compounds fast on that estimate: three degrees times roughly 13% per degree works out close to 40% more power for the same number of cooling hours.

Most renters brace for a brutal summer electricity bill and are usually pleasantly surprised. According to Japan's official Family Income and Expenditure Survey, as reported by Tokyo Electric Power Company, the average Tokyo household actually pays less for electricity in the July to September quarter than in the January to March quarter, a gap the utility describes as approaching double in the colder direction. The reason is not that summer cooling is cheap. It is that the gap between a comfortable indoor temperature and the outdoor temperature is smaller in summer than the gap most households try to close in winter, which is the section this leads into next.

That does not make summer free. A single-person household running a room air conditioner through July and August should expect it to be the single largest line on the electricity bill for those two months, and the "just crack a window instead" advice common in cooler climates does not really work here: at 74 to 76% outdoor humidity, an open window in August adds moisture load faster than it removes heat.

A Worked Example: What Cooling Restraint Is Actually Worth

Take a single-room air conditioner running eight hours a night through July and August, roughly 60 nights, at a typical residential rate. Applying the 13%-per-degree energy-efficiency estimate cited above, the difference between a 25°C and a 28°C setting compounds to close to 40% more electricity for the exact same 60 nights of use. On a unit that would otherwise cost somewhere in the ¥3,000 to ¥4,000 range for two months of nightly cooling at 28°C, running it three degrees colder can push that same two-month stretch toward ¥4,500 to ¥5,500. The gap is not enormous in isolation, but stacked against winter heating costs on the same unit, it is one of the few genuinely controllable levers a renter has over their utility bill.

Treat these as illustrative ranges based on typical single-room usage rather than a quote for any specific unit; your actual rate plan and the age of the air conditioner both move the real number.

A furnished, well-insulated unit with a modern inverter air conditioner earns back its rent premium fastest in exactly these two months. If cooling cost is a real factor in your search, our guide to how electricity bills work in Japan breaks down the rate structure behind that saving.

Treat the 28°C, lighter-clothing approach as the government's own baseline rather than a compromise. It is the guideline Japanese offices and public buildings are encouraged to follow under the same campaign, so a unit run any colder is running against the national grain, not with it.

Winter: Single-Glazed Windows and the Condensation Problem Nobody Warns You About

Ask a renter who has done one full winter in Tokyo what surprised them most. Condensation, not cold, usually tops the list.

January averages a low of 1.2°C and a high of just 9.8°C, mild by the standards of a genuinely cold-winter country, but Tokyo apartments are not built the way cold-winter countries build. The overwhelming majority of rental units, including most units built well into the 2000s, use single-pane glass set in aluminum frames rather than the double-glazed, thermal-break windows standard in northern Europe or North America. Aluminum conducts heat efficiently, which is a design advantage in some contexts and a liability here: the frame and the glass both drop to close to outdoor temperature overnight, so any warm, humid indoor air that touches them condenses immediately.

The mechanism is straightforward physics rather than a building defect, but it produces a real maintenance burden. Left unmanaged, that nightly condensation runs down the glass, pools on the sill, and over a winter it works its way into the same mold risk that tsuyu creates in summer, just through a different mechanism. Japanese household advice for this is well established and inexpensive: adhesive insulation film or sheeting applied directly to the glass, a dehumidifier or circulating fan run overnight, and simply wiping the sill each morning during a cold snap rather than letting water sit.

The financial surprise compounds the physical one. That same government household-spending data, reported via Tokyo Electric Power Company above, shows Tokyo's average electricity bill running close to double in the January to March quarter compared with July to September, because the gap between the Ministry of Environment's 20°C winter comfort guideline (Cool Biz's cold-season counterpart) and Tokyo's actual outdoor temperature is wider than the gap in summer, and single-pane windows lose heat back outside faster than they would with better glazing. A renter who budgeted carefully for a hot Tokyo summer and assumed winter would be the easy season is usually the one most caught out by the February bill.

Window insulation film and a circulating fan are the two cheapest fixes for both the condensation and the bill. Our guide to using electricity efficiently in Japan covers heating-specific savings in more detail than we have room for here.

None of this means winter is a bad time to live in Tokyo. It means winter is the season where the building's construction era and window specification matter more to your monthly costs than the outdoor temperature does.

Central heating essentially does not exist in Tokyo rentals. Most units heat room by room using the same air conditioning unit that cools them in summer, running in reverse as a heat pump, which is efficient but leaves any room without its own unit genuinely cold. Kerosene heaters are common in Japanese households generally but are frequently banned outright in rental leases because of fire risk in wood-frame construction, so check the lease terms before buying one. The kotatsu, a low table with a heater built into the underside and a blanket draped over it, remains a popular and cheap way to stay warm in one spot of a room without heating the whole space, and it is worth asking whether a furnished unit includes one.

Typhoon Season and Which Floors Actually Flood

Typhoon risk in Tokyo is real. It is also seasonal and geographically uneven, which makes it the one weather factor genuinely worth researching before you choose a neighborhood rather than after.

The Japan Meteorological Agency's 30-year average puts typhoon approaches to the Kanto-Koshin region at roughly 3.3 a year, concentrated almost entirely in a four-month window: May through October, with August and September carrying the heaviest load at 0.8 and 1.2 average approaches respectively. Nationally, roughly three typhoons make landfall on Japan's main islands in an average year, most of them in the same late-summer window.

What a typhoon does to your apartment depends far more on where in Tokyo you live than on the storm itself. A large stretch of eastern Tokyo, commonly referred to as the Koto 5 wards (Koto, Sumida, Edogawa, Katsushika and Adachi), sits on land shaped by a century of groundwater extraction and land subsidence. Edogawa Ward's own government describes roughly 70% of its area as lying below the high-tide sea level, a condition known locally as a "zero-meter zone." The ward's own historical record includes a 1917 storm surge that killed 240 residents and the 1949 Kitty Typhoon, which flooded roughly 60% of the ward. The five wards' joint large-scale flood evacuation plan puts the number of residents currently living inside the projected inundation zone at approximately 2.5 million.

That does not mean every renter in eastern Tokyo faces meaningful risk, and it does not mean the rest of the city is risk-free either. It means the honest answer to "which floor should I avoid" depends on the specific hazard map for the specific address, not on a rule of thumb like "avoid the ground floor." A ground-floor unit in a zero-meter-zone building faces direct inundation risk that a fifth-floor unit in the same building does not. But a fifth-floor unit in that same building can still lose power and water for days if the building's electrical and pump equipment, which is very often installed at basement or ground level, floods during the storm even if the living space itself stays dry.

The eastern zero-meter wards are not the only precedent worth knowing. Typhoon Hagibis in October 2019 pushed the Tama River to its highest recorded water level in roughly 90 years at several monitoring points, causing river overflow and internal flooding across parts of Setagaya and Ota wards, well outside the low-lying east, along with sections of neighboring Kawasaki. Setagaya Ward's own post-storm verification report documents the mechanism in detail. The lesson is not that any specific ward is unsafe. It is that river-adjacent land anywhere in Tokyo deserves the same hazard-map check as the well-known zero-meter zones, rather than an assumption that risk is confined to the east side of the city.

We have written in detail about which Tokyo areas carry the lowest flood exposure and why. Our guide to Tokyo's flood-safe areas breaks the city down ward by ward rather than repeating the general picture here.

Every ward and municipal government in Tokyo publishes its own flood hazard map (ハザードマップ) covering both river flooding and rainfall that exceeds drainage capacity, and checking the exact address against that map before signing is the single most useful five minutes of due diligence available to a renter here.

Before a Typhoon Actually Reaches Tokyo

A typhoon warning in Tokyo usually gives two to three days of lead time, which is enough to prepare properly rather than scramble.

• Balcony items: bring in potted plants, drying racks and anything else loose, since all of it becomes a projectile in typhoon-strength wind.
• Windows: close and lock every one and pull the curtains shut, which reduces shattering risk if something does break. Tape is not necessary on modern glass.
• Power and water: charge every device and fill a bathtub with water the night before, since both can be interrupted, particularly in flood-prone wards.
• Evacuation site: check your ward's designated site in advance rather than during the storm itself; most wards publish it on the same page as the hazard map.
• Building equipment: confirm whether the electrical and pump equipment sits at basement or ground level, since that, not your own floor, often determines whether you lose power even without direct flooding.

None of this requires special equipment or advance Japanese ability. It requires knowing the storm is coming with enough notice to act, which the Japan Meteorological Agency's public typhoon tracking reliably provides.

What Actually Differs for a Foreign Resident

Two things separate a foreign renter's experience of Tokyo's seasons from a Japanese resident's. Neither is really about the weather itself.

The first is access to the information. Every hazard map, every ward disaster-preparedness page and most of the practical mold and condensation guidance available online is published in Japanese only, aimed at a domestic audience that has absorbed this seasonal knowledge since childhood. A renter who cannot read Japanese, or who does not know to look for a ハザードマップ specifically, can sign a lease in a flood-prone zero-meter-zone building without ever encountering the information that would have changed their decision. This is a language and awareness gap, not a difference in actual risk.

The second is the assumption around insurance. Renters coming from countries where standard tenant or contents insurance automatically covers storm and flood damage sometimes assume the same is true here, and it frequently is not without checking the specific policy. Japanese fire and contents insurance (火災保険) is close to universal on a signed lease, but flood and typhoon-specific water damage coverage is not automatic on every plan, and the details vary by insurer and by building type.

Our guide to housing insurance in Japan covers what a standard policy actually includes, and what to specifically ask about if flood coverage matters to you.

Neither gap is a reason to be more cautious about Tokyo than the data justifies. It is a reason to close the information gap yourself, in English, before you sign, rather than discovering the answer during your first typhoon.

There is a third, smaller gap worth naming: documentation after the fact. If a typhoon or a mold outbreak does cause damage, Japanese leases and insurance claims run on a fairly formal paper trail, dated photographs, a written notice to the landlord within a specific window, sometimes a management company inspection before repairs begin. A renter unfamiliar with that process can lose weeks, or lose a security deposit dispute, simply by not knowing the sequence is expected. Ask your agent or management company what the actual claims process looks like before you need it, not after.

Pros and Cons of Tokyo's Weather for Renters

Tokyo's climate is genuinely livable for the roughly seven months a year outside the wettest and hottest stretch, and even inside that stretch, the problems it creates are well understood and manageable with the right building and habits.

What works in Tokyo's favor:

• Spring (March to May) and autumn (October to November) are mild, dry and genuinely pleasant, together covering close to five months of the year.
• Winter is cold rather than brutal. Tokyo almost never sees snow settle, and daytime temperatures rarely drop below freezing.
• Modern buildings with double-glazed windows and inverter air conditioning largely sidestep the condensation and cooling-cost issues described above.
• Typhoon risk is geographically concentrated, so it is avoidable through neighborhood choice rather than something every renter in the city faces equally.
• Every risk in this guide (mold, condensation, flooding) is well documented by Japanese authorities, even if the documentation is not in English.

What works against it:

• Tsuyu delivers five to seven weeks of humidity above 70% with little relief, and mold prevention has to be active, not passive.
• Summer humidity makes air conditioning close to mandatory for three to four months, and older units are inefficient enough to matter on the bill.
• The majority of the rental stock still has single-pane windows, so winter heating costs, not summer cooling costs, are the bigger surprise on a typical lease.
• Flood risk is real and unevenly distributed, and the hazard maps that explain it are published only in Japanese.
• None of this is disclosed to you automatically. A landlord or agent is not required to walk you through seasonal maintenance or hazard-map risk before you sign.

The honest summary is that Tokyo's weather is manageable, well documented, and almost entirely about the building rather than the city. The apartment you choose determines whether you notice any of this at all.

Who This Actually Matters To

This guide matters most if you are choosing between an older, character-filled building and a newer, blander one, because the seasonal factors above are exactly where that trade-off shows up.

It matters if you have asthma, allergies or any mold sensitivity, since a poorly ventilated unit through tsuyu is a genuine health factor, not just a maintenance annoyance. It matters if you are budgeting tightly and assumed summer would be your highest utility month, since winter is very often the one that actually strains the budget. It matters if you are looking at anything in eastern Tokyo's zero-meter-zone wards, where the flood question should shape your search from the start rather than come up after you have already found a place you like.

It matters less if you are renting in a newer building with double glazing and a modern inverter air conditioning system, where several of the problems described here barely register. It also matters less if you are on a short posting of a year or less and will experience only part of the seasonal cycle rather than the full year.

Building age is the single best predictor of how much of this guide applies to you. A unit built after roughly 2010, particularly anything marketed with a ZEH (net-zero-energy house) or equivalent insulation rating, will usually have double or triple glazing, a modern heat-pump air conditioner rated for genuine efficiency, and materials chosen with humidity resistance in mind. A unit from the 1980s or 1990s, even a beautifully renovated one, is far more likely to still have the original single-pane aluminum windows behind a new coat of paint. Ask directly about the building's construction year and window specification during a viewing. It is a more useful question than almost anything else on a typical apartment checklist, and it is one most renters never think to ask.

A Seasonal Maintenance Checklist for Renters

Most of what this guide covers comes down to doing a handful of small things at the right time rather than a large amount at the wrong time.

1. Late May, before tsuyu starts: buy or check your dehumidifier, confirm your circulating fan still works, and pull heavy furniture a few centimeters away from exterior walls.
2. June and July, during tsuyu: ventilate closets and shoe cupboards at least twice a week even on a rainy day, and wipe down window frames if you see any beading.
3. Early July, as tsuyu ends: set your air conditioner's default to 28°C rather than leaving last winter's setting in place, and check the unit's filter before the season's heaviest use begins.
4. August and September: keep half an eye on typhoon tracking through the Japan Meteorological Agency during any approach, and run through the pre-storm checklist above with real lead time rather than the night before.
5. Late October, as humidity drops: this is the easiest month to deep-clean and fully dry out anything that stayed damp over summer, including tatami mats if your unit has them.
6. December, before winter sets in: apply window insulation film while the glass is still easy to clean, and confirm your lease allows the heating method you are planning to use.
7. January and February, during the cold snap: wipe morning condensation off windows and sills daily rather than letting it pool, and keep indoor humidity below 60% even in winter to avoid trading one mold season for another.

None of these are large tasks individually. Skipped consistently, they are exactly how a fifteen-minute chore in May becomes a mold remediation bill in August.

Tokyo vs Osaka, Fukuoka and Sapporo: How Much Does the Weather Actually Differ

Some readers of this guide are choosing between Tokyo neighborhoods. Others are still choosing between Japanese cities, and for them it is worth knowing how much the seasonal pattern actually changes elsewhere.

City	Avg. Annual Temp	Annual Rainfall	August Avg. High	January Avg. Low	Character
Tokyo	15.8°C	1,598mm	31.3°C	1.2°C	Long humid summer, mild winter, real typhoon exposure
Osaka	17.1°C	1,338mm	33.7°C	3.0°C	Hotter summer peaks, milder winter, drier overall
Fukuoka	17.3°C	1,687mm	32.5°C	3.9°C	Wettest of the four, mildest winter, heaviest tsuyu rainfall
Sapporo	9.2°C	1,146mm	26.4°C	-6.4°C	No real tsuyu, genuinely cold winter with heavy snow, driest summer

Source: Japan Meteorological Agency, 30-year climate normals, Osaka, Fukuoka and Sapporo stations (1991 to 2020). Published in Japanese.

Osaka and Fukuoka run the same basic pattern as Tokyo (a wet, humid tsuyu followed by a hot summer) just with higher peak temperatures and slightly milder winters, so a building suited to Tokyo's climate transfers almost directly. Sapporo is the real outlier: essentially no tsuyu, a summer mild enough that many older buildings have no air conditioning at all, and a winter cold and snowy enough that heating and insulation, not humidity, dominate the housing conversation entirely.

For renters weighing Tokyo specifically against another Japanese city on climate grounds alone, the honest takeaway is that Tokyo sits in the middle of the pack. It is not the wettest, not the hottest, and not the coldest. What sets it apart is the building stock: a huge proportion of Tokyo's rental units predate modern insulation standards, which is a housing-market fact rather than a weather fact, and it is the part actually worth researching before you sign.

Typhoon exposure is the other real differentiator. Fukuoka and Osaka both sit closer to the typical typhoon track than Tokyo does and see comparable or slightly higher approach numbers in a given year, while Sapporo's northern location keeps it largely outside typhoon range entirely. Tokyo's position is middling here too: exposed enough that the seasonal preparation in this guide genuinely matters, but not among the highest-risk coastal cities in the country.

Practical Advice from E-Housing

The weather itself is not the risk. An apartment mismatched to the weather is.

At E-Housing, we work with foreigners, expat families, international students and working professionals across greater Tokyo every day, and the seasonal issues in this guide come up on nearly every viewing we run between April and October. We know which building eras tend to carry single-pane windows, which listings genuinely have modern insulation rather than a renovated kitchen and nothing else, and which specific addresses sit inside a flood hazard zone before you ever have to ask.

If you are searching now, ask direct questions about window glazing, air conditioning age and ward-level flood risk before you view rather than after, and treat a landlord's silence on any of those three as a reason to check the hazard map yourself. If you want a second opinion on a specific building or ward before you commit, we are happy to walk through what we know.

This is also where a bilingual agent earns their fee. A hazard map, a lease clause about heating equipment, and a building's actual construction year are all things we check routinely and can explain in plain English before you sign, rather than after a problem shows up in your first humid summer or your first cold snap.

FAQ: Tokyo Weather and Your Apartment, Month by Month

What is the hottest month in Tokyo?

August is Tokyo's hottest month, with an average high of 31.3°C and an average low of 23.5°C, and days above 35°C are common in the second half of the month.

What is the coldest month in Tokyo?

January is Tokyo's coldest month, averaging a high of just 9.8°C and a low of 1.2°C, though snow that settles on the ground is rare.

When does the rainy season (tsuyu) start and end in Tokyo?

The Japan Meteorological Agency's 30-year average has Tokyo's rainy season starting around 7 June and ending around 19 July, though the exact dates vary by a few weeks each year.

Does it snow in Tokyo?

Rarely, and almost never enough to settle. Central Tokyo averages just a handful of days a year with any measurable snowfall, concentrated in January and February.

What month has the most rain in Tokyo?

September is Tokyo's wettest month by total rainfall, averaging 225mm, driven by a combination of lingering late-summer rain systems and typhoon activity.

Is Tokyo humid all year?

No. Humidity is genuinely low from November through March, averaging in the low-to-mid 50s percent, and rises sharply from May onward, peaking at 74 to 76% from June through September.

When is typhoon season in Tokyo?

Typhoon activity affecting the Kanto region runs roughly May through October, with August and September carrying the majority of approaches based on Japan Meteorological Agency 30-year averages.

Which parts of Tokyo are most at risk of typhoon flooding?

The Koto 5 wards in eastern Tokyo (Koto, Sumida, Edogawa, Katsushika and Adachi) carry the highest flood exposure, with large areas sitting below high-tide sea level. Risk within central and western Tokyo is much lower but still varies by address.

Should I avoid ground-floor apartments in Tokyo because of flooding?

Not automatically, but you should check the ward's official hazard map for the specific address. Ground floors carry direct inundation risk in flood-prone zones, while upper floors in the same building can still lose power or water if shared building equipment floods.

Why do Tokyo apartments get so much condensation in winter?

Most Tokyo rental units still use single-pane glass in aluminum frames, which conduct heat efficiently and drop close to outdoor temperature overnight, causing indoor humidity to condense on contact.

Is air conditioning necessary in Tokyo?

For most of July through September, yes. Humidity above 70% makes the heat feel considerably worse than the temperature alone suggests, and simply opening a window does little to help once outdoor humidity is that high.

Is summer or winter more expensive for electricity in Tokyo?

Winter, on average. Japan's official household spending survey shows Tokyo electricity bills running close to double in the January to March quarter compared with July to September, mainly because of heating demand against poorly insulated windows.

How can I prevent mold in a Tokyo apartment during the rainy season?

Keep indoor humidity between 40 and 60% with a dehumidifier or circulating fan, pull furniture away from exterior walls, and ventilate closets regularly rather than leaving them sealed through tsuyu.

Do Japanese apartments have central heating?

Almost never. Heating is typically handled room by room through the same air conditioning unit used for summer cooling, so a unit's efficiency matters in both seasons.

What is the best time of year to move to Tokyo?

March through May or October through November, when temperatures and humidity are both moderate and neither mold prevention nor heavy air conditioning is an immediate concern.

Is Tokyo's weather worse than other major Japanese cities?

Not especially. Osaka and Fukuoka follow a similar pattern with slightly higher summer peaks, and only Sapporo differs meaningfully, with a genuinely cold, snowy winter and almost no rainy season at all.