Viewing Japan
Features
Essence
Time Line
Peace & Quiet
Famous People
Japanese Names
Japanese etiquette is demanding, but as a foreigner you will not be expected to have mastered it. Traditionally family or surnames precede given or forenames, and this is the system followed in this book, except for people universally known in the West by Western convention (such as Kazuo Ishiguro). It is customary to address people by their surname, followed by the honorific 'san'. In some cases the prefix 'o' is used, or both 'o' and 'san' together.
Geography
The total land area of Japan is 377, 435sq km, about 80 per cent of which is mountainous. It is an island nation, a curving archipelago 3,000km in length, consisting of about a thousand islands, which, until some 10,000 years ago, were attached to continental Asia. There are four major islands - Honshu (the largest) in the middle, Hokkaido in the north and Kyushu and Shikoku in the south. Japan's latitude stretches from about 25 degrees in the south to 45 degrees in the north. The Climate
Because of the length of the country north to south, there are great variations in the climate. Hokkaido is like Siberia - it has short, hot summers and long, cold winters. The Ryuku Islands are sub-tropical with mild winters and hot summers. In the rest of Japan, the summer lasts from June to August and is hot and humid, being especially wet during July, whilst winters are wet and cold, with heavy snow in the western part of Honshu. Elsewhere, temperatures rarely drop below freezing. The People
Japan is densely populated with 126 million people, of whom about 75 per cent live in cities and towns. It is a country of remarkable ethnic homogeneity, immigration by foreigners being practically unknown. There is really only one people racially distinct from the Japanese - the Ainu, the indigenous people of Hokkaido, of whom about 25,000 still remain. There are also a number of Koreans, who have been rather uneasily assimilated into Japanese life.
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