Super Special Awesome Lesson Notes!!
A Little Bit about Japan
Japan is located off the eastern coast of the Asian mainland and is comprised of four major islands (Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyuushuu) and several thousand smaller islands. It's only about 1/25 the size of the United States and boasts a population of about 128 million people. The country is about 3,000 km long. To give you a rough estimate of what that may look like, it actually begins on the same latitude as Montreal, Canada and stretches to the southern part of Florida. However, it's smaller than the state of California in terms of square milage; it only has about as much space as Montana.
Most of Japan is mountainous, which leads to a bit of overcrowding in cities. This is probably the main reason why buildings in Tokyo and other major cities are super tall: they can't build out, so they build up.
Speaking of Tokyo, it happens to be the capital city of Japan and one of the major fashion capitals of the world. It is separated into 23 wards, including Shibuya (where Harajuku is located) and Nerima (the birthplace of manga and the setting for Nerima Daikon Brothers). Tokyo is also often destroyed by large mutant dinosaurs and gigantic moths and turtles. Sometimes by two or all three at the same time. We don't know why.
Japan boasts a couple of major world landmarks, not nearly the least of which being Mt. Fuji, the largest (and most famous) mountain in Japan (which is actually an inactive volcano).* Another sight to see is Lake Biwa, Japan's largest freshwater lake, located in Kyoto Prefecture.
(* If and when you go to Japan and you go to Mt. Fuji, please don't make the mistake of calling Mt. Fuji "Fujiyama". Many foreign tourists who think they can read kanji do this and mark themselves as such. The proper pronunciation is "Fuji-san".)
Speaking of prefectures, Japan is made up of 47 different ones, each with something special about them. The most famous ones would probably be Kyoto Prefecture (where Kyoto [duh] and many temples are located, including the famous Douji Temple), Tokyo Prefecture (give you one guess why on that one) and Nagano Prefecture (where Karuizawa, the uber-hip vacation spot in both the real world and in anime, is located).
