The Japan Travel Calendar by Place: Onsen Valleys, Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Okinawa

Five calendars, one country

The single most useful thing to know about timing Japan is that its regions disagree. The week Kyoto is at its most beautiful and most expensive is a week Okinawa is merely pleasant and inexpensive. The month the cities are wettest is the month the onsen valleys are greenest and emptiest. The fortnight Niseko charges five figures, Osaka barely notices.

So rather than asking when to visit Japan, ask when to visit each part of it — then build the trip around whichever calendar you care about most. Below, each place gets its own twelve months: what the weather does, what a villa or a ryokan room costs that month, and how far ahead the good ones go.

The onsen valleys: Hakone, Hakuba and the Kaga springs

Hot-spring country runs on an inverted calendar: the colder and more inconvenient the weather, the better the bath. A private rotenburo with snow falling into it in February is the whole point of the exercise, and mid-November — maples above the steam — is the year's single most booked fortnight in Hakone.

Summer is the valleys' quiet season, and the rates show it. If the trip is about the water rather than the view, late June and September buy the same bath at half the price, with hydrangeas instead of maples.

Tokyo: the year in the city

Tokyo is the least seasonal place in Japan to enjoy and the most seasonal place to pay for. The restaurants, galleries and shops work every month of the year; the rates swing on blossom, on the autumn conference season and on the New Year closure. The city's honest low points are the June rains and the humid weeks of August — both easily managed underground.

A particularly quiet fortnight most years is early December: cold, dry, bright, the illuminations up, before the New Year window opens.

Kyoto: two weeks that set the price of the year

Kyoto's calendar is the sharpest in Japan. Two windows — the first week of April and the second half of November — carry noticeably higher rates than the rest of the year, and the best machiya book up early. Everything else is negotiable.

The quiet reward is February: cold, clear, the temple gardens under frost and almost nobody in them. June's rain is the other secret — moss gardens are at their most beautiful wet, and the rates are the lowest of the year.

Osaka: the flattest calendar in Japan

Osaka is the pressure valve. It sits forty minutes from Kyoto, it never sells out the way Kyoto does, and its rates move perhaps thirty per cent across the year rather than three hundred. In blossom and maple weeks it is the pragmatic base: take the villa in Osaka, take the train in at dawn, and spend the saving on dinner — which is, after all, the reason to be in Osaka.

Its own seasons are simple: hot and humid in August, damp in June, and beautifully mild from late October to early December.

Okinawa: the subtropical exception

Okinawa runs on a different climate entirely — subtropical, with warm water from April to November and a rainy season that arrives a month earlier than the mainland's. Its peak is the domestic summer holiday, roughly mid-July to the end of August, when rates double and the beaches fill with Tokyo families.

April to early June and the whole of October bring warm sea and lower humidity, ahead of or after the main typhoon season. September is more variable — often pleasant between typhoons, but typhoons do land.

Putting the five calendars together

• Blossom trip

  Late March to the first week of April. Book Kyoto as early as your dates are fixed, or base in Osaka and commute. Skip the onsen valleys — their blossom runs two weeks later.

• Maple trip

  The second half of November. Kyoto and Hakone peak together, which is why the fortnight is the hardest booking of the year; book as early as you can.

• Bath-and-snow trip

  January and February. Hakuba and Niseko for the powder, Hakone for a quieter version, and the cities quiet and clear in between.

• Sea trip

  Okinawa in late April to early June or October — warm water, no domestic peak, and rates that make a beach villa sensible.

• Quiet-season trip

  June anywhere on the mainland. Rain, moss and hydrangeas in Tokyo, Kyoto and the valleys alike; rates vary by property and date.

• ✓Golden Week (late April–early May) and Obon (mid-August) move the whole country; avoid both unless the festivals are the point.
• ✓Okinawa's rainy season starts a month before the mainland's — early May, not early June.
• ✓Kyoto in blossom and maple weeks overflows into Osaka; book both together or not at all.
• ✓New Year (29 December–3 January) closes many restaurants nationwide; plan meals before you fly.
• ✓Allow flexibility for weather-related disruption and check current transport notices. No fixed train or flight recovery time is verified.