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The English word Japan is an exonym, which means that he Japonese do not refer to their country with this name; the authentic name for Japan is Nippon, or Nihon.

The territory of Japan reaches 377,8 thousand square kilometers. The population is about 125,6 million people, which makes it one of the most densely populated country of the world.

Japan archipelago is situated in the Eastern Asia. The total number of its islands reaches 4,000, the main islands being Hokkaido, Shikoku, Kyushu and Honshu, which make up the biggest part of Japanese territory, namely 97%. Another big island formation within the Japanese archipelago is the Ryukyu archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean at the eastern limit of the East China Sea.

Japan is washed by the Sea of Okhotsk in the north, the Pacific Ocean and the East China Sea in the south and by the Korean channel and the Japanese sea in the west.

The climate of Japan is predominantly subtropical, but it varies greatly as the country stretches from the south far to the north. It embraces the four principal climatic zones: temperate oceanic zone with cold summers (Hokkaido), temperate oceanic zone with warm summers (a part of Honshu), the zone of humid subtropical climatic zone (the southern part of Honshu, the northern part of the Ryukyu archipelago, Shikoku), the tropical climatic zone (the southernmost part of the Ryukyu archipelago, the island of Okinawa). The northern part of the country experiences cold winters with frequent snowstorms while in the south of the country winters are warm and dry (the temperature here reaches +17 degrees by Celsium).

The climate of Japan is characterized by high quantity of precipitations which exceed those of the neighboring mainland. Frequent rainstorms and gales bring heavy clouds, thunder squalls, typhoons and in august. The destructive power of tsunami is known widely throughout the world. Tsunami is caused by shelf earthquakes which occur several times each century. The most recent of the Japanese earthquakes is 2004 Chūetsu earthquake and the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995.

Japan is abundant in rivers and lakes, the most essential water objects being the Shinano, or Chikuma river ? the longest river of the country, the Tone and Ishikari rivers, the Biwa, Kasumigaura, Saroma and Inawashiro lakes.

The relief of the country is highly forested and mountainous, which makes up to 75% of the country unsuitable for industrial and agricultural purposes.

The principal mountains of Japan are Mount Fuji (the highest peak of Japan, 3,776 m), situated in  Shizuoka andYamanashi provinces, Kitadake  (3,193 m, Yamanashi province), Oku-hotaka-dake (3,190 m, Gifu / Nagano provinces), Aino-dake  (3,189 m, Shizuoka / Yamanashi provinces), Yari-ga-take (3,180 m, Gifu / Nagano provinces).

In demographical terms Japan is peculiar for the density of its population, which has the world?s highest index ? more than 1,000 persons per square kilometer. The Kanto  and Nôbi plains accommodate Japan's largest cities and over half of the Japanese people.

The biggest cities of Japan are: Tokyo, the capital of the state with the population exceeding 12 million people, Yokohama (with the population 3,426 million), Osaka (2,598 million), Nagoya (2,171 million), Sapporo (1,822 million), Kobe (1,493 million), Kyoto (1,474 million), Kawasaki (1,327 million), Fukuoka (1,290 million), Hiroshima (1,159 million), Sendai (1,008 million), Chiba (924,5 thousand), Sakai Osaka (835,5 thousand), Okayama (696 thousand).