SOME UNKNOWN FACTS OF JAPAN

In Japanese, the name “Japan” is Nihon or Nippon, which means “Land of the Rising Sun.” It was once believed that Japan was the first country to see the sun rise in the East in the morning.

Japan has the third longest life expectancy in the world with men living to 81 years old and women living to almost 88 years old. The Japanese live on average four years longer than Americans.

Japan consists of over 6,800 islands.

Home to 33 million people, the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area is the largest populated metropolitan region in the world.

Japan has more than 3,000 McDonald’s restaurants, the largest number in any country outside the U.S.

Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s film The Hidden Fortress was the basis for George Lucas’ famous film Star Wars.

Each spring, Japan has a festival that celebrates both the penis and female fertility called Kanamara Matsuri, or “Festival of the Steel Phallus. 

Twenty-one percent of the Japanese population is elderly (over the age of 65), the highest proportion in the world. There are more elderly than there are children in Japan today.

• The Japanese eat more fish than any other people in the world, about 17 million tons per year. Japan is the world’s largest importer of seafood, with shrimp comprising about one third of the total, about four million tons a year. More than 20% of Japanese protein is obtained through fish and fish products.

• Over two billion manga, Japanese comic books or graphic novels, are sold in Japan each year.
• More than 5 billion servings of instant ramen noodles are consumed in Japan each year. Chef Momofuku Ando invented the first instant “chicken ramen” in 1958.
• Sushi has been around since about the second century A.D. It started as a way to preserve fish in China and eventually made its way to Japan. The method of eating raw fish and rice began in the early 17th century. Sushi does not mean raw fish in Japanese. It actually means rice seasoned with vinegar, sugar, and salt. Raw fish sliced and served alone without rice is called sashimi.
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• Japan has around 5.5 million vending machines with one on almost every street corner. There are vending machines that sell beer, hot and cold canned coffee, cigarettes, wine, condoms, comic books, hot dogs, light bulbs, bags of rice, toilet paper, umbrellas, fish bait, fresh eggs, porn magazines, and even used women’s underwear.
• Japan has the second lowest homicide rate in the world, but it also home to the spooky “suicide forest” Aokigahara at the base of Mt. Fuji. It is the second most popular place in the world for suicides after San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.
• The Japanese have such a low birth rate that there are more adult diapers sold than baby diapers.
• Cherry blossoms (sakura) are Japan's national flower.
• Japanese ganguro (“black face”) fashion was started in the 1990s and has young women tanning their skin as dark as possible, bleaching their hair, and using extremely colorful makeup in contrast to the traditional Japanese pale-skinned, dark-haired standard of beauty.
• The world’s shortest escalator is in the basement of More’s department store in Kawasaki, Japan; it has only 5 steps and is 32.8 inches (83.3 cm) high.
• Yaeba, or crooked teeth, are considered attractive in Japan—so much so that girls go to the dentist to have their teeth purposefully unstraightened.
• Haiku poetry, which was invented in Japan, consists of only three lines and is the world’s shortest poetic form.
• Women in ancient Japan blackened their teeth with dye as white teeth were considered ugly. This practice, called ohaguro, continued until the late 1800s.
• Shinjuku station, Tokyo’s main train station, is the busiest in the world with over 2 million people passing through it every day.
• Anime, or animated Japanese films and television shows, account for 60% of the world’s animation-based entertainment. Animation is so successful in Japan that there are almost 130 voice-acting schools in the country.
• Ninety percent of all mobile phones sold in Japan are waterproof because youth like to use them even while showering.
• Ninety-eight percent of adoptions that take place in Japan are of male adults, so family businesses can stay within those families.[15]
• The sole Japanese man who survived the wreck of the RMS Titanic in 1914, Masabumi Hosono, was called a coward in his country for not dying with the other passengers.
• In Japan, it is acceptable to take a nap, called inemuri, on the job—it is viewed as evidence of exhaustion from working very hard.
• When Japanese people meet, they traditionally bow instead of shake hands, and the lowest bow shows the deepest respect.
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• Noh drama is the oldest surviving theatrical form in the world, dating back to the 14th century. In this drama, all female characters wear elaborate masks while the male characters do not.
• Karate is perhaps the best known martial arts form to have come out of Japan. It originated in China but was refined in Okinawa. It literally means “empty hands” and uses trained movements of the hands, arms, and legs for self-defense. An estimated 50 million people worldwide practice karate.
• The first man born outside of Japan to compete as a sumo wrestler was a second-generation Japanese American who went by the sumo ring name Sendagawa. He made his debut in October 1915.
• The term harakiri may be familiar to Westerners as a gruesome Japanese method of suicide which literally means “cutting the belly.” The proper term for suicide performed by cutting one’s abdomen open with a knife is seppuku. According to Bushidō, the code of the warrior, a samurai facing defeat was supposed to save his honor by committing seppuku rather than surrendering to his enemy.
• The Japanese word for a dog’s barking sound is wan-wan instead of “bow-wow.” Japan’s Akita breed was developed in the 1600s and was once called the royal dog because the emperors kept Akitas as pets. The most famous of all Akitas was Hachikō. Legend has it he waited 10 years at the Shibuya train station in Tokyo for his master who had died while at work. A statue of Hachikō now stands outside the station as a tribute to his loyalty.
• The imperial family of Japan descends from an unbroken lineage of nearly 2,000 years. No other royal family in history has held its position for so long. The first Japanese emperor, Jimmu Tennō, ruled about the time of Christ
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• In 1993, Japanese author Yume-Hotaru wrote the world’s first novel written entirely on a cell phone: Maho No I-rando (Magic Island).
• To this day, Japan is the only country to ever have a nuclear bomb detonated on its soil. Kumamoto was the original target of the atomic bomb dropped by the U.S. Air Force on Hiroshima. On the day of the flight in April 1945, Kumamoto was covered in clouds, and the bomber passed it by, dropping the bomb on Hiroshima instead.
• Godzilla, a huge monster resembling a dinosaur, made his film debut in 1954. In Japan, he is known as Gojira, where he rose from the sea, after being awakened by atomic bomb testing, and attacked Tokyo.
• The Japanese religion of Shinto is one of the few religions in the world with a female solar deity.
• Many Japanese babies are born with a Mongolian spot (mokohan) on their backs. This harmless birthmark usually fades by the age of 5. It is common in several Asian populations and in Native Americans.
• Today, fewer than 200 people in Japan can claim both parents with exclusively Ainu, perhaps the original human inhabitants of Japan, descent. The Ainu do not possess the Y chromosome typically found in the rest of the Japanese population.