Kyushu in September and Typhoons or Hokkaido?

Hi,

I will travel to Japan from Sep 5th until Sep 27th.
My plan so far: I thought about staying 5 days at Kyoto, 2 days at the Five Lakes, 6 days at Tokyo and doing a lot of day trips from each city.

I am not sure where to go from Sep 18th to Sep 27th.
My first plan was to go to the southwest with Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Kagoshima for a week. But I read that there are a lot of typhoons in September in this area. So I am not sure if this is a good idea...

My Plan B is to go north to Hakodate and Sapporo to avoid Typhoons and to escape the heat.

What do you think? What's better in September?

Thanks
Marco

If you are considering Hokkaido I would go to Hokkaido first, to escape the heat and to Kyoto at the later part of September. It will still be warm enough. (Likely hot, but better than early September)

Enjoy your trip to Japan!

The chances of you being affected by a typhoon remains low. You have to be in the the right area at the right time and the western Pacific is a big place so a typhoon (or five) may not even get close to Japan.

On average, our travels/tours have been disrupted less than once a year - and we travel all the time. Last month we re-rerouted a trip around Takayama due to the train disruption (but the stay in Hiroshima the day after was fine), and last year we left Osaka a day early to avoid an approaching storm. I recall a couple of years back a delay (45 minutes) on a train due to heavy rains elsewhere on the network. That's about it - quite rare.

I had 3 weeks in September last year. 19th to 30th. Only one typhoon hit. And it was at night. And I slept through it.

Unless you're used to high humidity and heat, I would go north to Hokkaido. Typhoons can hit anywhere during this season, but as stated, the odds are low. That said, I just had to work around ferry cancellations between Izuhara on Tsushima and Hakata due to Taifu #12 coming through (July 29). It wasn't much but the waves were high enough to cause ferries to be cancelled.

Several years back while driving to Hokkaido, I had to wait for the ferry from Aomori to Hakodate as taifu #4 caused cancellations/delays. You can choose either area, and even if you get a direct hit, your itinerary shouldn't be disrupted by more than a day or two.

Heavy rains & wind can cause train cancellations as well, but mainly delays as the track get inspected. In 2012, a taifu blew through Kyushu and caused a 5-hour delay on the Kyushu Shinkansen from Kagoshima as the inspectors had to check the tracks for downed branches and dislodged rocks. The local lines are more susceptible to small landslides which can cause delays by a day or two, such as occurred last month on the line from Hakata to Karatsu.

Also, "taifu" in Japan are not categorized as in the west by name (tropical depression, tropical storm, and then Hurricane I-V). You have to pay attention to the wind speed reported in meters per second (sometimes km/hour). 50m/sec = 100 mph = 180km/hour. When Taifu #12 reached the west coast of Kyushu, the winds were 10m/sec, not enough to even worry about, but it was still reported as a "taifu."