"land of the rising sun among ot ..." a Japan Travel Page by chaistarr

see individual city pages for the most information and photos.
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Linguists are not sure about the exact origins of the Japanese language. It is believed to be linked to the Altaic language family (Turkish, Mongolian, ...) but shows also similarities to Austronesian languages like Polynesian.
Writing:
The Japanese writing system is very complicated. It consists of three different character sets: Kanji (several thousands of Chinese characters) and a syllable-alphabet called Hiragana and Katakana. Japanese texts can be written in two ways: . horizontally from left to right, or in the traditional Japanese way, vertically from right to left. Both writing styles exist side by side today.

Japan consists of several thousands of islands, of which Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku are the four largest. Japan is politically structured in 8 regions and 47 prefectures.

More than 50% of the area of Japan is mountainous and covered by forests
Japan lies in one of the most earthquake active regions of the world, and has many volcanos.
Japans slightly smaller than california, but has 126 million people (about five times more than california).

it is very ethnically homeogenous and a little xenophobic, due to the fact the country was closed off from toehr countries for about 200 years. 99% of people are Japanese, the rest are Korean, Chinese, Brazilian, or...whatever! they are called "gaijin" or foreigner