General facts about Japan

  • Japan is located in an area known as The Ring of Fire in the Pacific.
  • The area of the country is 377,873km², which makes it slightly smaller in land mass than California.
  • Japan consists of 4 main larger islands and more than four thousand smaller islands.
  • The main japanese islands are Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū and Shikoku.
  • Honshu is the largest island.
  • Tokyo is located on Honshu island.
  • Japan is over seventy percent mountainous terrain with approximately eighteen percent of the land mass suitable for settlement.
  • Currency: Yen
  • Central Tokyo has a population of 12 million people, with the population of the Greater Tokyo Area estimated at over 35 million people. The world's most populous metropolis
  • Nickname: "Land of the Rising Sun".
  • After Singapore, Japan has the lowest homicide rate in the world.
  • Japan’s highest peak, Mount Fuji (3,776.24 m), is a volcano.
  • On March 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry and the "Black Ships" of the United States Navy forced the opening of Japan to the outside world with the Convention of Kanagawa. 
  • There are over 127,360,000 (2010 est.) people living in Japan.
  • Japan's society is very homogeneous, composed of 98.5 percent ethnic Japanese.
  • Japanese is the official language of Japan.
  • Japanese uses 4 different writing systems; Kanji , Hiragana, Katakana, and Romaji.
  • The two principal religions in Japan are Buddhism and Shinto.
  • In 2004, about 19.5 percent of the japanese population was over the age of 65.
  • In Japan, suicide is the leading cause of death for people under 30.
  • KFC is the place to be on Christmas Day in Japan.
  • You can buy beer, hot dogs, sodas, batteries, wine, cigarettes, light bulbs, condoms, comic books, and used women's underwear from vending machines.
  • There is at least one vending machine on every corner.
  • Approximately 85 percent of Japanese people have never tasted turkey.

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