Japan – A Place Like No Other
Japan is a place like no other, there you will find a land where samurai used to walk the streets and where dynasties fought tooth and nail for power and land. Japan has a lot of unique attributes: it has an extremely unique culture, way of life, and its location and region are unlike any other on Earth.
Japan’s absolute location is at 36°12'17.4"N 138°15'10.6"E with over 6,800 islands. It is relatively located 587 miles east from the coast of South Korea, 6,303 miles west of the United States of America, and is 3,045 miles east of China. It also shares the East China Sea with China and South Korea. It is connected to two oceans the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It is located entirely in the North Eastern Hemisphere. It is located in the Ring of Fire (an area where extreme seismic activity happens regularly) which accompanies many other countries, such as the west coast of North America, west coast of South America, the Philippines, and the east coast of the Pacific islands.
Japan is a country of beauty and holds countless human characteristics. Some of these features include the National Diet Building, Tokyo Disneyland, the requirement to learn English, and Japanese as the official language. Japanese uses four different writing systems to communicate: Hiragana (what they use for native words), Kanji (Chinese characters), Katakana (what they use for foreign words), and Romaji (the western alphabet used to write Japanese). Japan’s two largest religions are Shintoism and Buddhism, just these two religions account for 95% of the population. Japan also has many physical characteristics such as Mount Fuji, Aokigahara or the Suicide Forest, and Shinano River. The Shinano River is 228.043 miles long. Mount Fuji is 12,388 feet high. Aokigahara, or the Suicide Forest, is 14 square miles of vegetation on the northwestern side of Mount Fuji. It has received the name of Suicide Forest because of its high number of suicides committed (105 in 2003) in the forest each year.
Japan is set in East Asia. Japan has no land borders, as it is isolated from the rest of Asia by the East China Sea which separates Japan from the Koreas and China. It is also known as “Land of the Rising Sun”. Japan is very mountainous, so much so that more than 70% of the land are covered by them.
The empire of Japan covers over 145,936 square miles of land and is over 18,486 miles long from northern point to the southern. Japan has a population of 126.92 million with 13 million in the Tokyo metropolitan area and over 36 million residence in the Greater Tokyo metropolitan area. Tokyo is the most expensive city in the world to live in, it can cost upwards of $1,800 a month for just a 900 square feet apartment. A common way of travel is the train. Tokyo’s main train station, the Shijunku Station, has over 2 million people passing through it every day. Other ways include buses, cars, scooters, and bicycles. The majority of manufactured goods come from Japan’s ports. Japan imports clothing, petroleum, and natural liquid gas. In the 1600’s, the Dutch traders discovered Japan and its people. They gave the Japanese European technology like better guns. The oldest port in Japan is Yokohama while Nagoya is the largest and busiest. People usually use emails, text message, the internet, magazines, or books to share their ideas. Japan is a very interesting country. It has more than 3,000 McDonald’s restaurant and a maximum waist size for men (33 inches) and women (33 3inches). Crooked teeth are considered attractive and in ancient Japan, women would dye their teeth black to be pretty. Raw horse meat is considered a delicacy and is eaten raw. Japanese people eat the most fish (about 17 million tons per year).
Every year more than 5 billion packets of instant ramen noodles are consumed every year. It is appropriate to slurp noodle as it indicates that the meal is delicious. Kentucky Fried Chicken is considered a typical Christmas Eve meal. Japan has such a low birth rate that there population is actually in decline, there are even more adult diapers sold than baby diapers there are also more elderly than there are babies. 98% of kids adopted are boys due to want of male heir for family businesses.
To conclude this research paper, Japan in it of itself is one of the most countries in terms of culture, history, and geography. Japan is unique from its region to location. Its towering mountains and geography is some of the most amazing of its kind, with some of the most beautiful (or creepy) forests and other distinct landmarks. The way of life and how it started is a memorable attribute to this foreign country. Its culture is one of a kind and attracts people from all across the world. This great country is fantastic, and truly deserves the title; “the Land of the Rising Sun”.
