Before I moved here, I would chat with daid a fair bit and when he'd complain about the summer in Tokyo, I'd complain about the summer back in Ontario. However, since I hadn't visited Tokyo in the summer before moving here, I had no idea how terrible a comparison that was.
While Ontario can sometimes get pretty hot and is frequently humid, the weather will alternate between something vaguely hellish and something pretty reasonable every week or two (or at least this is how I remember it). Around here, the maximum temperature is at least 5 °C hotter and it's just constantly hellish outside.
I do not think there has been a day this month where the humidity has been less than 60% and this entire week, the humidity has been above 80%. When combined with daytime highs in the low- to mid-30s, even sitting somewhere shaded and not moving around very much results in profuse sweating during the day. I can't even walk to the train station in the morning without being disgusting by the time I get there (and I don't even want to think about what happens when I have to jog a little to catch a train).
That's also just the usual bad weather. There are also typhoons, which fortunately haven't really hit Tokyo at all this year. One was supposed to pass over, but it dissipated first and the other crossed over Honshu to the south of Tokyo into the Sea of Japan so it just rained sideways and sporadically for a day. Granted, at least when a typhoon is nearby, it feels cooler outside because it's at least really windy.
And yes, the winter is pretty mild here, which is more than I can say for the winter in Ontario. In principle, this should make up for the terrible, terrible summer. Except that our apartment lacks central heating and any insulation to speak of, which is unpleasant in its own way... but I still look forward to it because it's much better than this.
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