Typhoon Dujuan hits Tokyo during Japan's once-in-a-decade Silver Week

Typhoon Dujuan is crossing the Kanto region today, brushing Tokyo with violent winds and torrential rain through tonight before it weakens into an extratropical low by midweek. The timing is brutal: it's landing in the last stretch of Japan's rare five-day Silver Week, the first such alignment since 2015 that we flagged last week as worth booking around. If you're in Japan right now, or flying there this week, here's what the storm actually touches — and what it doesn't.

What's happening today

ANA has placed every flight using Haneda, Narita, Hachijojima and Shizuoka airports under special typhoon handling for the day — fee-free changes and refunds, cancelled or not. All ANA flights to and from Hachijojima, in the Izu Islands, are cancelled through today; so are the ferries connecting the islands to Tokyo. JAL cancelled more than 90% of its domestic Haneda and Narita departures on Saturday alone. Rail across Kanto has been disrupted since Sunday evening, and JR pre-emptively suspends Tokaido Shinkansen services once wind and rain cross its own thresholds — a call it's making hour by hour today rather than in advance. Cathay's Japan site has posted its own Dujuan disruption notice, so Hong Kong–Tokyo flights sit inside the same window.

Your Kyoto leg is fine — Tokyo and the islands aren't

Dujuan's track runs through Kanto, Tokai, the Izu Islands and up toward Tohoku. It never touches Kansai. If you paid last week's Silver Week premium for a Kyoto hotel, that booking and that trip are untouched — the storm simply isn't there. The risk is specific to anyone with a Tokyo hotel, a Haneda or Narita flight, or an Izu Islands add-on inside this window.

What you're actually owed

Worth saying plainly, because it trips people up every typhoon season: Japan has no EU261-style law forcing airlines to pay cash for weather cancellations. What ANA, JAL and Cathay are offering — a fee-free rebooking or a full refund of the fare — is the ceiling, not a floor you can negotiate above. That's a real benefit, not nothing, but it only returns what you already paid for the flight. It says nothing about the hotel night in Tokyo you can no longer reach, or the ferry to Hachijojima that's cancelled outright.

The number that actually protects you

That's where the real money sits, and it's the same pattern we found with Okinawa's storms in August: a refundable Tokyo hotel rate typically runs ¥2,000–4,000 a night more than the non-refundable one — roughly HK$100–200 at current rates. Against a three-night mid-range Tokyo stay at Silver Week pricing (¥15,000–25,000/night, HK$750–1,250), forfeiting a non-refundable booking you can no longer use costs several times more than the flexible rate would have. If you're still holding Tokyo or Izu plans for the next 48 hours, that's the trade to make now, not after a cancellation notice lands.

Track how Tokyo's real-feel cost compares to Kyoto and Osaka on the Japan destination page, or see our live typhoon disruption tracker for how this season compares to past storms.