Читать книгу Japan Travel Guide & Map Tuttle Travel Pack - Wendy Hutton - Страница 8

Japan at a Glance

Geography

Situated in Eastern Asia, east of the Korean Peninsula and between the Sea of Japan and the North Pacific Ocean, the Japanese archipelago totals 364,485 square kilometers (140,728 square miles) of land spread over 6,852 islands. The four major islands are Hokkaido in the north; the centrally situated main island of Honshu, which is home to Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Nagoya; Kyushu off the western end of Honshu; and Shikoku to the south of central Honshu.

Climate

With the Japanese archipelago stretching more than 3,000 km (1,864 miles) from southern tip to far north, the weather can range from subtropical in Okinawa to near Siberian in winter in central and northern Hokkaido. Between those extremes the climate remains similar: Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu are hot and humid in summer with temperatures typically above 30 degrees Celsius; mostly warm, sunny and dry in autumn and spring (except for a short pre-summer rainy season and post-summer typhoon season); and in winter mostly dry but with temperatures dropping only into single digits away from the mountains.

Thatched buildings at Oshino with Mount Fuji in the background

People

At last count, in 2017, Japan’s population was 126 million, of which around 35 million live in the Greater Tokyo area comprised of Tokyo and the neighboring prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama. Approximately 98.5% of the population is Japanese; the rest is made up primarily of Korean (5%) and Chinese (4%). The Japanese are the longest-living people in the world with an average life expectancy of 84.19 years (80.85 for men and 87.71 for women), yet the population is declining as the country also claims the world’s second lowest birthrate.

Shinkyo-bashi in Nikko

Language

The official language of Japan is Japanese. Besides Japanese, Okinawa has its own related but minor Ryukyuan languages, while the indigenous Ainu people of Hokkaido have the unrelated Ainu language. Japanese is the first language of 99% of the Japanese population, and with three separate writing systems (kanji, hiragana and katakana) that between them use thousands of different characters, not to mention a complex system of honorifics, it isn’t the easiest language to quickly get to grips with. Not that you need to worry. In the main cities and tourist areas, you will be able to get by in English. Head out into the countryside, however, and you won’t want to forget your phrasebook. To help make the language barriers a little less daunting, a survival guide to Japanese is included on pages 122–4, which covers useful expressions and pronunciation.

Religion

Because of the traditional rituals used for birth and death, the Japanese often say that they are born Shinto but die Buddhist. In fact, it’s easier to consider the two religions as forming one set of traditional practices rather than being separate or conflicting faiths. Some 84% of Japanese say they practice traditions related to Shintoism, the indigenous religion of Japan, while 71% practice those related to Buddhism, which arrived from China in the 6th century. However, the Japanese don’t typically consider themselves to be religious: more than 80% profess no religious affiliation and about 65% don’t believe in God or Buddha.

The annual Doburoku festival in Shirakawa-go

Government

Japan is a parliamentary government with a constitutional monarchy, the current constitution having been adopted in 1947. Emperor Akihito is the chief of state, while the prime minister, as of writing Shinzo Abe, is the head of state. The legislative branch of government, the Diet, consists of a 242-member House of Councilors and a 450-member House of Representatives. The prime minister is designated by the Diet, and is usually the leader of the majority party or majority coalition in the House of Representatives.