Cultural Notes: Geography
Let's take a brief pause while the first 30 Hiragana characters
sink in. When learning a language and culture, it's useful to have a general
understanding of the way the country is laid out. In this chapter, we'll take a
brief look at Japan
and learn some of the major features and cities.
As a brief housekeeping note, most of the city and state
names we'll be seeing here are spelled differently in English than they are in
Japanese. For example, the city we know as Tokyo is actually Toukyou in Japanese. In this chapter, I'll use the Japanese names
in the main text and put the English names, when they differ, in parentheses.
Like Hawaii, Japan
was formed as a result of volcanic activity. Japan doesn't just have mountains. It would be more
accurate to say Japan
is mountains. From virtually any
point in Japan,
you can see mountains in just about any direction you have an unobstructed view
of the skyline. This is one thing I love about the way the country looks.
Seeing those hazy, low-lying mountains in the distance always reminds you
you're in Japan.
