Japan Geography

Japan is an island country, situating off the Pacific coast of the Asian mainland. It consists of four main islands: Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu and Hokkaido, and thousands of smaller surrounding ones. Major cities of Japan are Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Sapporo, Nagasaki. More than half of the country is mountainous and covered by forests. The country experiences frequent earthquakes, because of the fact that it is located in a region, where several continental plates meet. In Japan the climate varies strongly in different regions. In most of the major cities, including Tokyo, it is temperate to subtropic. The climate of the northern island of Hokkaido and the Sea of Japan coast is much colder.