Japan (Japanese: 日本, Nippon or Nihon, and officially 日本国) is an island nation in East Asia, situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean. It is approached the west by the Sea of Japan, and also expands from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea and also Taiwan in the south. Component of the Ring of Fire, Japan extends an island chain of 6852 islands covering 377,975 square kilometers (145,937 sq mi); the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and also Okinawa. Tokyo is Japan s capital and biggest city; various other major cities include Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and also Kyoto. Japan is the eleventh-most heavily populated country in the world, in addition to one of the most largely booming as well as urbanized. Concerning three-fourths of the nation s surface is mountainous, focusing its populace of 125.36 million on narrow coastal plains. Japan is split into 47 administrative prefectures as well as 8 traditional regions. The Grea...