Japan Essay -- Geography Geographical Japan Essays

japanGeographical SettingJapan is an island country in the North peaceable Ocean. It lies off the northeastcoast of brinyland Asia and faces Russia,Korea, and China. Four large islands andthousands of smaller ones repair up Japan. The four major islands-Hokkaido,Honshu,Kyushu and Shikoku form a curve that extends for round 1,900kilometres.TopographyJapan is a land of great natural beauty. mountains and hills cover around 70% ofthe country. IN fact, Nipponese islands consist of the rugged upper fork of agreat mountain range that rises from the floor of the North peaceable Ocean.Jagged peaks, rocky gorges, and thundering mountain waterfalls provide some ofthe countrys close spectacular scenery. Thick forests thrive on mountansides,adding to the scenic beauty of the Japanese islands. Forests cover about 68% ofthe countrys land.Japan lies on an extremely unsettled part of the earths crust. As a result, theland is constantly shifting. This shifting causes dickens of Japans to th e highest degree strikingfeatures-- earthquakes and volcanoes. The Japanese islands have about 1500earthquakes a year. approximately of them ar minor tremors that cause little damage, butsevere earthqaukes put across every few years. Underseaquakes sometimes cause huge,destructive tidal waves, called tsunami, along Japans Pacific coast. TheJapanese islands have more than 150 major volcanoes. everyplace 60 of these volcanoes are active.Numerous short, swift rivers cross Japans rugged surface. most of the riversare too shallow and steep to be navigated. Their waters are used to irrigatefarmland, and their rapids and falls supply power for hydroelectric plants. morelakes nestle among the Japanese mountains. Some lie in the craters of extinctvolcanoes. A large number of hot springs gush from the ground throughout thecountry. The Japanese islands have a total land area of about 337,708 sqkm. Theislands , in order of size, are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku. The sea ofJapan was hes the countrys west coast and the Pacific ocean lies to the east.ClimateRegional climates in Japan can be compared to those of the East Coast of theUnited States. Kyushu and Shikoku have a climate more than like that of Perth. Theyhave long hot summers and mild winters. The island Honshus generally haswarm,humid summers. Winters are mild in the south and cold and snowy in then... ...ies of the voice communion for use in different social contexts these varietiesare called social styles of speech. A large number of phrasal idioms are verbalizethroughout Japans four main islands (Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu), aswell as on the smaller islands, such as the Ryukyu Islands. Some dialects-forinstance, those utter in the southern parts of Japan, notably on the islands ofKyushu and Okinawa-are virtually incomprehensible to the speakers of otherdialects. As a result of this salmagundi of dialects, the Japanese use a standard,or common, dialect to facilitate communication thr oughout the country. The twodialect families with the largest number of speakers are the dialect spoken inand around Tokyo, which is the common dialect, and the dialects of the Kansai persona in western Japan, spoken in cities such as Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. Due tothe spread of the common dialect through television and radio, most peopleoutside the Tokyo region speak the common dialect as well as a local dialect.RefrencesWorld Book encyclopaedia (Cd Rom) Grolier Encyclopedia (Cd Rom) Encarta 96Encyclopedia (Cd Rom) JETRO (Internet Site) CIA World Factbook (Internet Site)