Japan

CHAPTER ONE

Old Meets New

What do people know about Japan? Japan is in East Asia, in the Pacific Ocean - most people know that. Many people like sushi, and that comes from Japan. And everyone knows about Japanese sumo wrestling. But there are a lot more amazing things about this country.

Japan is one of the most exciting countries in the world. It is also a country with many different faces. In Japan, east meets west, and old meets new. Here you can find beautiful old wooden houses and big tall modern buildings in one street. You can visit ancient temples and shrines, and buy the newest computer games. Japan has some of the biggest cities in the world, and some of the most beautiful countryside.

Japan is a country of islands. It has four big islands - Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku - and nearly seven thousand smaller ones. The country has many mountains, and there is not a lot of good land for buildings. Most Japanese people live in the big cities in the south and west of Honshu, away from the mountains. There are 128 million people in Japan, and nearly 69 million of them live near the Pacific Ocean between the capital city, Tokyo, and Osaka.

You can find very different weather in the different islands of Japan. In the island of Hokkaido, the winters are long and cold, and the summers are warm. But in Okinawa and the Ryukyu islands in the south, it is warm in the winter and hot in the summer. So in December in Japan, you can go in the sea in the south, and go skiing in the mountains in the north!

Millions of people visit Japan every year. Japanese people like to help these visitors, and they are very polite to them. This is a very important thing for most Japanese people; they want to be polite to everyone.

Work and the family are also very important in Japan. Most Japanese people have two religions - Shintoism and Buddhism. People go to temples and shrines, and there are also many Shinto and Buddhist festivals in the year.

Some of Japan's industries make a lot of money. Japan makes about 10 million cars every year, and its electronics industry - cameras, computers, phones, and televisions - is famous around the world. Japan is always changing: it often makes or does new things first, and countries in the west often change things to be like Japan. But Japan does not forget its past. In the countryside, many Japanese work as farmers. They grow rice and catch fish, like people hundreds of years ago.