Japan in the Summer: Just Don’t

A common piece of advice. But I ignored it.

Dear Jane,

I’ve been in Tokyo, Japan for a few days and it’s hot. It’s been in the mid-90s with humidity in the 80% area. This is similar what I experienced in Orlando earlier this summer, and I definitely thought that that work trip to Orlando would be a good primer for Japanese summer weather. I’m not sure why, but I was wrong. You can feel the humidity in Orlando. The air is thick and swampy, and Tokyo isn’t like that at all. I feel like I’m breathing air here, and my glasses only fog up when I exit a 7-Eleven, which has the best AC of the top three convenience stores here.

Tokyo, though, does something that Orlando has never done to me the three times I’ve been there: dehydrate me via sweat. I’ve never been so wet on the outside and dry on the inside, and I can’t consume enough water or Pocari Sweat (Japan’s Gatorade) or Lychee Salt (Japan’s Powerade) to keep up with how much liquid is squeezing out of me.

I brought weather appropriate clothing, but I still stand around soaking wet and licking my chapped lips. I also draw looks from the locals because, in addition to drenched clothing, my face gets red when I overheat. But while they’re looking at me, I’m looking at them. They’re all wearing at least one long sleeved or panted item and not breaking a sweat, except for a salary man here or there. I noted this observation in a text to my friend Analisa, and she hit me back with some Google research:

Japanese people have a genetic predisposition towards having fewer G alleles, which determines how many apocrine sweat glands one has. Apocrine sweat glands are what cause you to screte sweat from your hair and hair follicles and are more likely to provide a home for odor causing bacteria. There is another sweat gland called eccrine, which cause you to sweat from your pores and is determined by your A alleles. Different groups of people have varying combinations of these alleles and glands.

Now, I Googled this myself, and I found a lot of blogs about this, and they were all citing other blogs and reddit. So, I can’t provide a solid source for this, but based on personal experience, yes, it’s true.

When my clothes dry, they have a nice salty crust on them, and if the cloth is dark, you can see the salt, and my skin gets stained. The abundance of convenience stores and drink vending machines are keeping me alive. Food and beverages are very cheap here. Each bottle of water or sports drink costs somewhere between $0.82-$1.42 depending on the store or vending machine.

Summer is the worst time to come to Japan because of the nearly unbearable heat and humidity, and that’s why no one should come to Japan in the summer. The most popular seasons to visit are spring for cherry blossom viewing and autumn for leaf peeping. Winter is popular only amongst winter sport enthusiasts. So why did I come here in the summer? A few reasons: it’s off-season for tourists, so things are cheaper, and I’m a budget traveler. I can take time off work easily in late August and early September. The main reason, though, is that I wanted to climb Mt. Fuji and climbing season is July 1st – September 10th.

And I made it to the summit. I’ll write to you about that next.

<3 Katherine

PS – Summer is also the start of typhoon season. Typhoons ground planes and bring Japan’s world-class train lines to a grinding halt. So far, I’ve had nothing but sunshine.