Day 1 Intro to Japan

The islands of Japan are really just the tops of undersea mountains and volcanoes, sticking up out of the ocean.

Those mountains, as you can see on the map, cover nearly all of Japan.

Only about 20 percent of the land is flat. Because it is difficult to live and farm on mountain slopes, most Japanese people have always lived in those flat areas, the coastal plains. 

In addition to the mountains and the lack of flat land, the nearness of the sea shaped the lives of Japanese people.

Naturally, they turned to the sea for food. They learned to prepare all kinds of seafood, from eel to shark to octopus to seaweed.

As a result, seafood has been a key part of the Japanese diet for thousands of years. 

The Japanese were separated from the other people of Asia.

The Japanese to develop their own culture. They created a religion and a social structure very different from those in other parts of Asia.

This separation has always been an important part of Japanese society. 

Japan isn’t totally isolated, however.

Korea is only about 100 miles away from Japan. China is about 400 miles away.

Those short distances eventually allowed the older Korean and Chinese cultures to influence the new culture of Japan.