Islands of Japan

Islands of Japan

Japan has a large number of small islands and five main islands. Here, let's take a look what's in the islands. See also Maps of Japan.

Hokkaido

Hokkaido is most known of it's city Sapporo and it's product, Sapporo Beer. Other major cities in Hokkaido are Hakodate and Asahikawa in the center of the island.

In Tokyoists minds, Hokkaido is a cool place to live. Indeed, it's summers are cool, the average August temperature being around 22C.

Hokkaido is also a famous tourist attraction during the winter as one can view the passage of ice bergs on Sea of Okhotsk. Other attractions are numerous ski resorts and smaller cities like Otaru.

The last remains of Ainu, the Japanese aboriginals live in Hokkaido.

Honshu

Honshu is the largest island of Japan, often called "the Mainland". Honshu is mountaineous and volcanic so it has frequent earthquakes, as the Great Kanto Earthquake. On Honshu you can also see Japanese Alps.

Unlike often thought, Honshu does have agricultural regions, perhaps the most known is Niigata. Niigata is the city described in Yasunari Kawabata's Yukiguni and nowadays is notorious of it's natural disasters and heavy snowfalls.

Honshu consists five regions:

• Chugoku
• Kansai
• Chubu
• Kanto
• Tohoku

Naturally, the Kanto area has the largest population in cities such as Tokyo, and Yokohama. Other large areas are Chubu (Nagoya), and Kansai (Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe).

Honshu also has many rivers but surprisingly few lakes. Honshu is connected to the islands of Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku by tunnels and bridges.

Shikoku

Do you want to learn about
traditional Japanese performer?
Check out Geisha.

Shikoku is connected to the main island by the great Seto Bridge. Shikoku has many mountains, running east and west. Highest mountain in Shikoku is Mount Ishizuchi in Ehime prefecture. Takamatsu is the northern city which way most of the traffic to the island goes.

Fruits and rice are planted in the eastern part of Shikoku, including persimmon. Two crops of rice can be cultivated annually in the southern area. Also there are lot of abundant forests and hydroelectric power.

Shikoku appears to be somehow mysterious island for the Japanese, and is surprisingly unknown even for the Japanese living in other islands. Haruki Murakami's book Kafka on the Shore describes a small private library in Shikoku and the atmosphere of the island. Also Kenzaburo Oe is born in Ehime and his book M/T could be inspired by forests of Shikoku.

Kyushu

Kyushu is the third largest island of Japan. It is often discussed as a birthplace of Japanese civilization, which then spreaded to other islands. One of the most famous city of Kyushu is Fukuoka, which used to be the old port of Japan before Meiji era, through which people, goods and culture was imported to to Japan from Korea and China.

Kyushu has subtropical climate, especially the Miyazaki and Kagoshima regions. Major agricultural products are rice, tea, tobacco and sweet potatoes.

Kyushu is split into following prefectures:

• Fukuoka Prefecture
• Kagoshima prefecture
• Kumamoto Prefecture
• Miyazaki Prefecture
• Nagasaki Prefecture
• Oita Prefecture
• Saga Prefecture

Okinawa

Do you want to learn about Japanese
traditional clothing?
Check out Japanese Kimono.

Okinawa is the island, far south from the main islands. It is very different experience to other islands of Japan and it has it's own different kind of culture. It is an island with subtropical climate with white beaches and traditional infrastructure. The kanji characters for Okinawa mean "offshore rope ". Okinawa is combination of small islands (ordered by size):

• Okinawa Island
• Iriomote Island
• Ishigaki Island
• Miyako Island
• Kume Island
• Minami-daito Island
• Irabu Island
• Yonaguni Island
• Ie Island
• Iheya Island
• Tarama Island

Okinawa used to be an independent kindong, the Kingdom of the Ryukyus. Okinawans speak the Ryukyu dialect which has long history. Sadly the original dialect is near extinction due to television, and radio. Kimonos, traditional festivals and dances are very different in Okinawa. There is a famous Okinawan singer group called Nenes.

Have you ever been to Hakone?
This is one of the towns we recommend.

Okinawa has largest complex of US army bases in Japan and the citizens suffer from noise caused by the helicopters and jets.

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