Geography of JaPan

The islands of Japan, lying between the "Sea of Japan" (Korea's East Sea) and the Pacific Ocean, are part of a chain running along the coast of Asia opposite China, Korea and, in the north, the former Soviet Union. Japan consists of a number of islands: Kyushu, Hokkaido, Honshu and Shikoku and around three thousand small islands, including the Volcano Islands and Iwo-jima.

Tokyo is the capital city. Other important cities - all on Honshu, the largest of the islands - are Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto and Yokohama.

Many thousands of years ago the islands separated from the Asian mainland. Lying on the Pacific Ring, a region where the Asian and Pacific plates making up the earth's crust meet, around the Pacific Ocean, Japan is geologically very active. There are around one hundred and sixty volcanoes in the area of which around a third are active. Mount Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan, was last active in 1707. In the last one hundred years Japan has suffered from more than twenty major earthquakes, such as the quake in Kobe. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and typhoons are all too familiar to the Japanese people.

The islands are very mountainous; between seventy and eighty percent of Japan is occupied by hills and mountains. The towns and cities are mainly squeezed into the flat lands along the coast, with very high levels of population density.

The climate is tropical in the south and cooler in the north. Humidity is high in the western regions of the main islands, with heavy rainstorms. On the Pacific coast the weather is less extreme. Winter snowfalls are heavy in the north.