Interesting facts about Japan
Geography
Japan is the 60th largest country in the world (out of over 200) in terms of land area. It is 25x smaller than the USA or People's Republic of China, but is slightly bigger than Germany, 3x bigger than England, and 9x bigger than the Netherlands.
Japan is the 10th most populous country in the world*. It's population is equal to the UK, France and Denmark combined.
Japan ranks 18th worlwide in terms density of population, behind such countries as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Bangladesh, the Netherlands and Belgium. If England was counted as a country (separate from the UK), its density of population would be slightly higher than Japan. Japan's population density if 11x higher than the US, and slightly lower than the states of New Jersey or Rhode Island.
Mount Fuji (3,776 m) is the 4th most prominent peak in Asia outside the Himalaya range (the three others are in Indonesia and Malaysia).
Apart from the four main islands, Japan is composed of over 3,000 smaller islands.
Japan has 29,751 km of coastlines, the 6th longest of any country.
History & Society
Japan has the oldest surviving monarchy in the world. The first historical emperor of Japan was Ojin, reigning from year 270 to 310, and was deified as Hachiman. Legend has it that the very first emperor was Jinmu, 1000 years earlier.
Japan's national anthem, Kimi Ga Yo (ŒN‚ª‘ã), is the oldest in the world, although it was only officially recognised as such in 1999. It is based on a 9th century poem.
Japan annexed Okinawa and Taiwan in 1895, then Korea in 1910, and kept them as part of the territory of the Japanese Empire until 1945. Okinawa still belongs to Japan.
Genetic studies have revelaved that the modern Japanese descend at 2/3 from the ancient Koreans, and 1/3 from the ancient Jomon people (also known as the Ainu), who are more closely related to the tribes of Siberia and to the Native Americans than to the Han Chinese.
The old Japanese language was a blend of ancient Korean and Ainu language. Since the 6th century, Chinese characters (and the words that go with them) were imported into the language, and now amount to about half of the vocabulary in Japanese.
Japan has one of the highest life expectancy* in the world, only surpassed by small countries like Andorra, San Marino, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. Japanese people live in average 4 years longer than US citizens, 2.5 years longer than the Germans or Belgians, and 1.5 years longer than French or Italian people.
English is the only foreign language taught in public Japanese schools.
There are thousands of words from English in modern Japanese language (often not understood by older generations), and the number keeps increasing fast.
Economy
The world's largest fish market is the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo.
Tokyo Haneda Airport is busiest airport by passenger traffic in Asia, and the fourth busiest in the world.
Japan is the world's 2nd country with the most vehicles per square kilometers after the Netherlands, and just before Belgium.
Despite Japan being the world's second largest economy, Japanese people only enjoy the 20th highest GDP per capita.*
There are about 1,500 sake ("rice wine") breweries in Japan.
Japan is a heavily entertainment-based society, with probably more restaurants, cafés, bars, clubs, karaoke, game centres, manga cafés, massage parlours and relaxation centres per square kilometer than anywhere else on earth. Japan also has the world's largest sex industry.
Japan is the only major country (let's say with a population of over 5 million) that still hunts whales. Whale meat has been promoted by the government by adding it to public school menus. Dolphin meat is also eaten in Japan (notably in Shizuoka), but in a much smaller quantity.
Between 1986 and 1990, Japan experienced an asset price bubble, with and and stock prices skyrocketing then crashing. The decline still continues, and real estate prices in Tokyo have now fallen to their early 1980's levels.
Despite its reputation of weird or useless inventions and gadgets, Japan has not invented many mainstream products by itself. Its most famous inventions are the VHS tape (developed by JVC in 1976), the Compact Disk and the CD-ROM (both developed by Sony in collaboration with the Dutch company Philips). Sony also invented the now defunct Betamax videocassette and the Mini Disk (MD).
Inventions falsely attributed to Japan include the Quartz Watch (invented by the Canadian Warren Marrison, but first commercialised by Seiko in 1969), the walkman (Sony, who claimed the invention in 1979, admitted in 2003 that German citizen Andreas Pavel came with the idea 2 years earlier), video games (an invention claimed by both Britain and the USA), mobile phones (invented by AT&T in 1947), or comic books (first published in Europe in the early 1800's).
* Figures for 2005
See also
Edo Trivia
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