What October Feels Like
October is when autumn properly arrives, and it's about as good as travelling in Japan gets. The summer heat has broken, the air feels crisp and cool, and the skies turn clear and blue, which makes wandering around all day pleasant. Up in the mountains and the north, the first autumn colours are already coming through.
It's also peak harvest time, and you can taste it everywhere. New crop rice, chestnuts, mushrooms, persimmons, the grape and wine harvest around Yamanashi, and autumn's salmon and fresh salmon roe all land through October. If food is a big part of how you travel, this is a great month for it.
Why October Can Be a Great Time to Visit and How to Plan It
October is one of the best months you can pick for Japan. It's the one time everything lines up at once, some of the best weather of the year, the autumn colours really starting to become visible, a packed festival calendar, and the harvest in full swing. Whatever you're into, there's a lot to build a trip around.
The one downside is that this is no secret. October is the second busiest month after April, so the popular spots fill up and the best autumn weekends book out well ahead. Kyoto is the big one to sort early, since demand there runs hot from late October right through November. So get your accommodation locked in as soon as you can, and reserve your shinkansen seats for the busy weekends. If you'd rather stay flexible, you can always ride in the unreserved cars, but on a busy autumn weekend you'll want to line up on the platform at the train's starting station to be sure of a seat.
The festivals are a real highlight this month, and Kyoto has a cracker on the 22nd, when the Jidai Matsuri costume parade fills the streets by day and the Kurama Fire Festival lights up a mountain village to the north that same night. Worth knowing that Kurama is a small place and hard to get in and out of on the night, so it pays to sort out your travel in advance. There's plenty on elsewhere too, and the autumn destination guides round up what's worth timing your trip around.
October Weather and the Autumn Colours
October weather is some of the best of the year, and it varies nicely by region. Tokyo and the Honshu cities sit around 16 to 22 degrees with plenty of clear, sunny days, so you can be out exploring without the summer heat to work around. If you head up to Hokkaido, you'll find it's crisp and sunny in the mid teens, perfect hiking weather around Sapporo. Down in Shikoku and Kyushu it's warmer, low 20s, with evenings still mild enough to enjoy Fukuoka's street food stalls, and Okinawa stays warm in the mid 20s as the risk of a typhoon coming goes down.
One thing worth knowing is that it's not equally dry everywhere. Tokyo actually sees more rain than Osaka in October, and Hiroshima and the Inland Sea side are drier again with more sunshine, so if you want the best odds of clear weather, the west is a safe bet. Up in the mountains it's a fair bit colder, especially at higher points, so pack a warm layer if that's somewhere you plan on heading.
The colour basically sweeps down the country as the month goes on. It kicks off up in Hokkaido, where Daisetsuzan and the Sounkyo area start changing from late September. Then through the middle and second half of October it fills in across the north and the mountains, with Aomori's Lake Towada and the Oirase gorge, the Japan Alps around Kamikochi, and the high ground above Nikko all coming alive. The big name spots down in Kyoto and Tokyo don't really get going until November.