«LAND OF THE RISING SUN»
Japan, also known as the ‘Land of the Rising Sun,’ is, after Indonesia, Madagascar and Papua New Guinea, the fourth largest island-state in the world. The country is made up of a chain of islands, which stretch along the east coast of Asia. The main islands of Japan are Hokkaido to the north, the central – and largest – island of Honshu, and Shikoku and Kyushu in the south. There are another 3,000 smaller islands, concentrated mainly in the Seto Inland Sea. A long mountain range lies above this archipalego, making up approximately 73% of Japan’s land mass. So flatlands are scarce, which is why the price of real estate is so high in Japan. It is mainly around Tokyo in the ‘Kanto’ region and the area around Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe – the ‘Kansai’ region – where there are bigger areas of flat land. For this reason, both of these regions are very densely populated, with the major cities have populations of millions of people.

JAPANESE «GOES WEST»
Since the internationalization of the Japanese economy in the last century, the Japanese language has been adopting new terminology from English, French and German, though the Japanization of these borrowings seldom keep the same pronunciation since the Japanese alphabet employs syllables as opposed to singular letters. So Japanese can adopt many foreign words, even if the source word becomes unrecognizable to foreigners. Examples from English include: ‘christmas’ (kurisumasu); ‘salesman’ (seerusuman); and ‘sandwich’ (sando). Geman examples include: ‘Arbeiten’ (arubaito); ‘Neurose’ (noiroozo); ‘Allergie’ (arerugii); and ‘Kölnisch Wasser’ (oodekoron).