The weather of various prefectures

I am currently considering moving to Japan next year and am thinking about which prefectures would be best suited temperature-wise. As I am British, I guess that relatively cool Summers and Winters without too much snow would be best.

Now I believe that I`m right in thinking that this rules out Okinawa, Kyusyu and Shikoku immediately as they are too hot. The Western and Southern sections of Honsyu also seem too warm.

Hokkaido and Touhoku would presumably be too cold.

That would seem to leave Ibaraki-ken, Fukushima-ken, Tochigi-ken, Gunma-ken, Toyama-ken and Ishikawa-ken.

Is there anything about these prefectures that could put a person off moving there? If I do move to Japan then I would be happy to live in the countryside but but these areas are a little off the tourist trail so I know very little about them.

I am afraid, almost all regions get either very hot or a lot of snow.

The only region that gets not excessively hot is Hokkaido. However, the island gets lots of snow. You may look into Kushiro on Hokkaido, which is one of the coolest places of Japan in summer and receives relatively little snow during winter. It is probably the city that comes closest to UK weather.

Ibaraki-ken, Fukushima-ken, Tochigi-ken and Gunma-ken are among the hottest prefectures during summer, unless you go into the mountains. Hotter than Okinawa, in fact.

Toyama-ken and Ishikawa-ken receive lots of snow in winter, especially in the higher elevations and also get very hot in summer.