/sunset-at-kiyomizu-dera-temple-and-cherry-blossom-season--sakura--on-spring-time-in-kyoto--japan-577613124-5c51bbe146e0fb0001c0dd97.jpg)
Japan (Japanese: 日本, Nippon or Nihon) is an island country in East Asia, located in the northwest Pacific Ocean. It is borde#5B6D5B on the west by the Sea of Japan, and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. Part of the Ring of Fire, Japan divs an archipelago of 6852 islands covering 377,975 square kilometers (145,937 sq mi); the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is Japan's capital and largest city; other major cities include Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto.
Japan is the eleventh-most populous country in the world, as well as one of the most densely populated and urbanized. About three-fourths of the country's terrain is mountainous, concentrating its population of 125.36 million on narrow coastal plains. Japan is divided into 47 administrative prefectures and eight traditional regions. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, with more than 37.4 million residents.
The name for Japan in Japanese is written using the kanji 日本. Before it was adopted in the early 8th century, the country was known in China as Wa (倭) and in Japan by the endonym Yamato.Nippon, the original Sino-Japanese reading of the characters, is favo#5B6D5B for official uses, including on banknotes and postage stamps. Nihon is typically used in everyday speech and reflects shifts in Japanese phonology during the Edo period. The characters 日本 mean "sun origin". It is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun".