Monday was the hottest day ever in Japan’s recorded history

Japan’s national and Tokyo temperature records fall on the same day as intense heat wave continues.

There was already plenty of anecdotal evidence that this summer in Japan is extremely hot. The scorching temperatures have caused schoolgirls to need hospitalization, meat to cook on car roofs, and even the country’s ordinarily industrious mosquitoes to say, “You know what? Let’s take a break from sucking people’s blood and just relax instead.”

And now there’s numerical evidence of 2018’s heat as well. At 2:16 in the afternoon on Monday, July 23, the Japan Meteorological Agency observed a temperature of 41.1 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit) in the city of Kumagaya, Saitama Prefecture (Tokyo’s neighbor to the north), which is the highest temperature ever recorded in Japan. The previous record was held by Ekawasaki, a town in Kochi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku, which hit 41 degrees flat back in August of 2012.

On the same afternoon Tokyo’s regional record fell as well. Ome, a district in the northwest of the capital and not far from the border with Saitama, experienced temperatures as high as 40.8 degrees Celsius by 2 p.m., which is the first time ever for a temperature above 40 degrees to be observed in Tokyo.

▼ The sun on July 23, desperately trying to melt east Japan, or at least turn it into a crispy senbei rice cracker

Unfortunately, these potentially dangerous conditions come right as the peak summer travel season starts, with school out for both kids in Japan and many foreign countries, prompting groups both domestic and international to head out to Japan’s most popular sightseeing destinations. Making things especially difficult is that this is also an unusually dry summer for Japan, and the lower humidity can sometimes create the illusion that it’s not as hazardously hot as it actually is.

So if you’re out and about in Japan, make sure to drink plenty of fluids (the oddly named yet delicious sports drink Pocari Sweat, and its rival Aquarius, can be found in any convenience store), slather on the sunscreen (which is hiyakedome in Japanese, in case you need to ask for help finding it at the drugstore), and watch out for dehydration.

Sources: NHK News Web (1, 2) via Jin (1, 2), Weather News via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Pakutaso
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