Hello, everyone.
Welcome to the GEOfocus channel, and my name is Paul.
On the GEOfocus channel,
I'm going to be doing some country profiles about different countries.
Today, I want to start with one special country,
Japan.
I want to start with Japan because I live in Japan.
It's a country of striking contrasts,
of beautiful traditional ambiance alongside bustling urban centers.
It really has something for everyone.
Japan is a country located in Northeast Asia,
not very far from Korea or from China.
The city of Fukuoka is only 217 kilometers away from Pusan in South Korea
and, for you Americans, that's 135 miles away.
And, it's only 876 kilometers away from Shanghai in China,
and in miles that 545 miles.
Japan is an island nation,
and Japanese people will remind you of that at every opportunity, by the way.
It consists of 6852 islands,
but only 430 of them have people living on them.
There are just four main islands that form the core of the country,
including 97% of the land and 99% of the population.
Those four islands are Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Hokkaido.
The current total population of Japan is 126.888.000.
That is down from 127.800.000 in 2008
The population of Japan has started to decline.
The low birth rate and aging population in Japan means that
Japan will lose 30% of its population over the next 50 years.
Imagine that.
Japan has a total size of 377.900 sq km,
and in miles that's 142.000 sq miles.
It's slightly bigger than Germany,
slightly smaller than Zimbabwe,
and it's about 4% the size of the United States.
That's despite the fact,
that its population is 40% the size of the United States's population.
That means that Japan's population density is 10 times that of the United States.
Here's the flag of Japan.
The flag of Japan is called the Hinomaru
which means "the circle of the Sun".
Now, the name of the country Japan in Japanese is Nihon or Nippon,
and that means "The sun's origin."
That is often translated into English as "The Land of the Rising Sun".
So, why do we say Japan in English?
Well, let's thought that these two characters were pronounced that way
in a Chinese language that was encountered by Europeans,
and they took that pronunciation back to Europe,
and started calling it Japan or something similar.
Of course, the language of Japan is Japanese
[speak Japanese]
The capital city and largest city in Japan is, of course, Tokyo,
which is a huge bustling world-class city with a population of about 9 million.
That's just in the core of the city center,
but if you include the entire metropolitan area surrounding Tokyo,
the total population is about 37.8 million
making it the most populous metropolitan area in the world.
The Tokyo area is absolutely massive,
and it's not uncommon for people to spend four hours a day on a train
commuting to work or school,
and God forbid you try to catch the last train of the night out of Tokyo.
The second largest city is technically Yokohama,
which is inside Tokyo's metropolitan area.
But, practically speaking, the second largest city is Osaka,
which is in the Kansai region and that's where I live.
So, it's obviously number one.
Osaka is just a stone's throw away from Kyoto,
which is the ancient capital of Japan and one of Japan's cultural treasures.
Many people associate Japan with traditional ambience
like kimonos, like the sound of koto,
like samurais, like traditional architecture.
But, these days, Japan is just as well known for its modern culture
that defies all creative boundaries that we have in the West.
Japanese animation, comic books, video games and cosplay, meaning costume play,
are what defines Japan in the minds of lots of Japan fans around the world.
This aspect of Japan's culture is often called otaku culture.
I'm not an otaku, but I live in a neighborhood that is full of otaku culture.
My apartment building is actually right next to a maid cafe.
That's right, there are cafes in Japan
where otaku men go to be served
and entertained by teenage girls dressed up as maids,
or sometimes as high school girls,
or sometimes as cats, or things like that.
There's nothing sexual about these shops, by the way.
I don't quite get the appeal.
I don't know why they go,
I guess they're just 'kawaii'.
In Japanese, 'kawaii' means cute
and in Japan everything just has to be 'kawaii'.
Girls have to be 'kawaii', animals are 'kawaii',
some cars are 'kawaii', toothbrushes are 'kawaii'.
Everything has to be kawaii,
everything is cute in Japan.
Japanese food consists largely of seafood,
probably due to Japan's existence as an island country.
In fact, most of Japan is uninhabited mountains.
So, most of the people live in a very narrow coastal strip along the ocean.
That means that fishing has always been an important industry,
and an important source of food in Japan.
And, just like in much of Asia the main source of carbohydrates is rice.
Living here in Japan, I eat rice every day and I almost never eat bread.
After World War II, Japan laid in ruins, but they rebuilt their economy
and eventually became the second largest economy in the world,
after the United States.
Now, it has been surpassed by China,
so Japan is currently the third largest economy in the world.
Japan's main industries are motor vehicles, electronics, iron and steel parts
and machine tools, and things like that.
Probably some of the companies you are familiar with
are motor vehicle companies like Toyota,
or electronics companies like Panasonic or Sony, things like that.
Japan is a small country, but it is a powerhouse of a country
and it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
I hope you learned something about Japan from this video
and I hope you became more interested in Japan.
It's a great place and I hope you visit someday.
Thank you for watching the GEOfocus channel.
My name is Paul, have a nice day.