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Does anybody know what time it is? If you’re traveling, you will with these tips

Do you know what time it is in Paris? Find out how you can figure it out with these tips.
Do you know what time it is in Paris? Find out how you can figure it out with these tips.
(Catharine Hamm/Los Angeles Times)
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Question: I am flying from Tokyo to Paris, and I’m confused about daylight saving time. Is this a worldwide policy? Should I set my clock ahead one hour in Tokyo, the way I would in Los Angeles?

Mark Watters

Simi Valley

Answer: In answer to Watters’ questions, no and no — no, the whole world doesn’t use daylight saving, and no, you should not move your clock by an hour.

But in answer to musical questions posed by the pop-rock group Chicago, “Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?” Yes and yes. Several travelers made suggestions on how to cope with timetable turmoil.

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Let’s see if we can get this sorted out.

The U.S. begins daylight saving time March 12 and ends it Nov. 5, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory whose chart (www.lat.ms/navalchart) shows the dates we’ll be changing through 2025 unless we decide to chuck the whole thing, which we have a few times.

Our country made standardized time zones the law in 1918 (although U.S. and Canadian railroads got things under control in the 1880s, coming up with a time scheme to get the trains to run on time), the observatory notes in its “History of Daylight Time in the U.S.”

The 1918 Standard Time Act also included daylight saving time. At least it did until 1919, when it was repealed.

Local governmental entities got to choose whether to implement daylight saving, but in 1942, the U.S. mandated the spring-ahead, fall-back way of life for all.

That ended in 1945, and time became a hodgepodge of local desires.

Fast forward to 1966 and the Uniform Time Act, which “establishes a system of uniform Daylight Saving Time throughout the nation and its possessions,” according to the Department of Transportation.

“Uniform” is a bit of a misnomer. Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and big chunks of Arizona don’t observe daylight saving time, according to DOT.

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Confused? Carry on, and we promise you will be more so.

“Most of Europe observes daylight saving time, called ‘summer time,’” Jeanna Bryner writes in “Daylight Saving Time 2017: A Guide to the When, Why, What and How” on the Live Science site.

Europe begins its one-hour shift the last Sunday in March (March 26 this year) and ends it the last Sunday of October (Oct. 29).

But most of the rest of the world — about 60% — -isn’t on daylight saving, according to Timeanddate.com, which offers calendars, tells you holidays and so much more.

Japan started using daylight saving in 1948 but stopped in 1951, the site said, adding “Tokyo currently observes Japan Standard Time (JST) all year.”

If you’re traveling between Tokyo and Paris, the calculation on what time it is is fairly simple.

“The difference between Paris and Tokyo is eight hours before March 26 and seven hours after March 26,” Wojciech Borkowski of FlightFox.com, an online travel concierge and a lecturer at Frequent Traveler University, which teaches travelers to travel economically and efficiently.

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Here’s the easiest part of this equation: Japan has only one time zone, Marian Goldberg, a travel marketing consultant and Japan travel planner, said in an email.

So how do you know what time it is?

Lauren Ball is owner and operator of TheHolidayGirl.com, an L.A. agency for “millennial women travelers and the people who love them.” In her spare time, she is a background vocalist for Katy Perry and has 67 countries on her travel résumé.

Her suggestion: “All international travel is calculated on the GMT/UTC system, which is essentially like the equator but for time,” she said in an email. “All cities have a time assigned to this system and are either ahead or behind.

“Time zones are shown as +/- GMT/UTC [Greenwich Mean Time/Universal Time Coordinated]…. It’s worth memorizing how many hours your hometown is from GMT/UTC, depending on the time of the year.”

You can find your time zone at WhatIsMyTimeZone.com, among other sites.

Ball also may wear an inexpensive wristwatch (rather than exposing a cellphone) that she sets to GMT/UTC time, making sure she knows how far ahead or behind her destination or home is.

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Other travelers suggest using Timeanddate.com.

And then there is your smartphone. If you have an international cellular plan, it will adjust to your new location. (If you’re in airplane mode and using Wi-Fi, Goldberg noted in her email, it will not.)

Afrodite Pastroumas, a senior director product for TCS World Travel, a private jet tour operator, takes the phone idea a step further: She enters various cities she’s traveling to or tracking in the world clock function on her smart phone.

Kathy Cheng, who founded ThankfulRegistry.com, a gift registry that helps with baby or wedding gifts, is based in Taipei but works with people in different time zones.

She uses the phone/clock too, but she said, “If I’m second-guessing myself, I literally Google ‘What’s the time in Tokyo?’ and let Google enlighten me.”

Now, ladies and gentlemen, that is all because we are out of time.

Have a travel dilemma? Write to travel@latimes.com. We regret we cannot answer every inquiry.

travel@latimes.com

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