Weather... for better or worse
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This timeless piece
from "The Tourist and the Real Japan" (1963) is
reproduced here in Eyes on Japan by kind permission of the
author.
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Official travel
literature on Japan seldom does more than mention weather. Most
books and brochures slide over this subject by saying that Japan
has a temperate climate; and then giving mean temperatures for
summer and winter. Rainfall in inches per year is sometimes added.
Being from Phoenix,
Arizona, it is hard to be objective about the weather in Japan, so
I polled fifty foreign residents for their views on the subject
and found that we all had one thing in common: nobody liked it.
On a yearly basis, I
would say Japan has somewhere around thirty days of near perfect
weather, when it is neither too hot nor too cold, the wind is not
blowing too hard and skies are clear. These days invariably
follow a heavy, fairly long rain or storm of some kind.
Then we have another
thirty days or so in which one or more of the four factors named
above are absent but the remaining ones are in a combination that
still offers 'good' weather. For example, it may be quite cold but
clear and beautiful, or warm and windy but clear.
Other than this
approximately sixty days 'good' weather, it ranges from
some degree of irritating to awful. The best months are April-May
and October-November.
It may snow in April and 'phoons often come
as late as November, but on the average, these are the most
pleasant months. Any other time the traveler should be prepared to
put up with rain, cloudy days, or muggy heat from June thru
September; or rain, cloudy days and/or blustery cold from December
thru March.
A general rule
of thumb for these off seasons is one 'good' day, three 'fair' and
three 'poor' per week.
© Boyé Lafayette De Mente 1963, 2006 All
rights reserved
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Editor's note: Boyé L. De Mente, who first
came to Japan in 1949 as a member of the occupation forces, holds a degree
in economics and Japanese from Tokyo's Sophia University, and a BFT
from the American Graduate School of International Management in
Glendale, Arizona.
He is perhaps best known as the author of a highly
successful series of books on social and business customs in Japan,
China, Korea and Mexico.
As a journalist with the Japan Times, and later on as editor of 'The
Importer Magazine,' he witnessed at close hand the rapid growth of
Asia's 'tiger' economies. His guidelines to westerners wishing to
do business in the new post-war Japan were widely recognized as ground-breaking.
For a list of all De Mente's books in print, or available
on the Internet as digital editions, please see his personal website, http://www.boyedemente.com.
You'll discover that Amazon.com
lists a vast array of titles bearing his name, and for a fuller account of
the author's fascinating career,
please go
to http://arts.searchbeat.com/boye.htm.
The author's personal news and reviews can be found at http://boyedemente.blogspot.com.
I am indebted to Mr. De Mente for kindly
allowing me to republish the above article here in Eyes on Japan.
David Appleyard
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This page last updated 2008-09-16
Eyes on Japan compiled and edited by
David Appleyard, 2001-2008 |
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