梅雨
Tsuyu
Eighty-five percent humidity in June, bone dry by January. Tokyo swings harder than almost any major city, and a routine has to survive both ends of it.
Tsuyu — 梅雨, the plum rain — arrives in early June and settles over the city for about six weeks. Humidity runs into the eighties. Nothing dries. Then July and August take that moisture and add thirty degrees to it.
By January the same city is dry enough to give you a static shock off a train door. Winter humidity falls to a fraction of the summer figure, and indoor heating removes what is left. Most routines are built for one of those conditions and quietly fail in the other.
The wet months. Skin loses less water to the air, so heavy occlusive layers have less work to do and start to feel like a film sitting on the face. Go lighter. And don’t confuse surface moisture with hydration — humid air does not hydrate skin, it only slows the rate at which skin loses water. Cleansing matters more in these months. Sunscreen matters most, because UV is indifferent to cloud cover.
The dry months. Water leaves the skin faster than it is replaced, which is what tightness actually is. This is when the sealing step earns its keep. Apply onto damp skin, always. And resist the urge to add products — a barrier under that much pressure does not also need four new actives introduced to it.
Same four products, year round. Different quantities, different order of importance. That is the whole adjustment.
