Ethnography: Japanese Geography and Demographics

I found this topic very interesting and timely, because when we were researching the Japanese education system, and I had been looking up the school year dates/terms/patterns, I had got interested in the fact that the summer break was very similar in timing and length to the UK one, and I wondered what their relative latitudes where.  I had heard decades ago that the origin of the school summer holiday being so long is from schooling starting when we were very much still an agrarian society and people would not let their kids go to school if they needed them for harvesting.  The UK has a temperate maritime climate, as opposed to much of Europe and the US which has a temperate continental climate (I question the use of the word temperate since it was still 96 degrees heat index last night at fireworks time, but...).  

So, the summer break in the US is earlier because the harvest is ready sooner and the kids were historically needed to help.  The UK & Japan are at similar latitudes to each other, both island nations, similar land area, but the UK gets warmed by the Gulf Stream, whereas Japan has nothing like that to moderate its climate.  And it is right by Siberia (although we could get weather from Siberia in the winter in the UK too - if a high-pressure system set up.  Clear and very, very cold - the side of town that I lived on was higher than the rest of town, and there was nothing taller to the East, which is one reason that I often had snow when the rest of my school didn't...). This is the site that I got my UK & Japan information from - https://aboutjapan.japansociety.org/the_british_isles_and_japanese_archipelago_a_comparison_of_environmental_basics 

They're both island nations with very dense population, although the population is Japan is nearly double that of the UK - and that is without counting the issue of habitable land area lost to mountains (we studied that in Geography in High School, but being in the UK, our example was Switzerland and the alps, of course ;)).  

The UK definitely has issues with insularity (by the very nature of the word) & xenophobia, and I wonder how much of that is from being an island nation and if nations that are constantly rubbing elbows experience the same too, given the various land grabs and wars in Europe over the centuries too.  Of course, I've only ever noticed one earthquake in the UK, and although it was scary (& noisy - I hadn't realised how noisy they could be - in films, they just shake the scenery around, but there isn't the roaring, grinding noise), nothing was damaged.  Even teeny tiny tremors get reported on the news in the UK, as they are so rare there.  I know of at least three other earthquakes that I didn't even notice were happening; they were so minor.  Japan is a whole other story in that department - so much so that we did about the ring of fire in high school geography.

I also didn't know how tall Mount Fuji was - it just tends to get mentioned as an example of beauty and symmetricality (which probably reflects the type of magma at the plates, with it being an island and presumably it is basalt being destroyed - that tends to be smooth flowing, from my dim and distant university geology course... not the sticky stuff that tends to lead to volcanoes getting repeatedly capped and blowing their tops and ending up asymmetrical).  But rarely is its height discussed - and of course, in Asia, you are competing against the Himalayas for attention in the height range, so it's not surprising that gets overlooked, but it's a seriously respectable height, unlike, say, Kansas's Mount Sunflower, which is barely over 3000 feet, and a slight swell against the surrounding fields - you should see the websites about "a daring ascent of the north face of Mount Sunflower" if you want to be amused some time.  The UK's mountains are barely over 3000 feet too, most of them, but they are a lot craggier, and people die climbing them every year.  I nearly died on Snowdon once, but that is probably a tale for another day... I used to rock climb and mountaineer at university (as well as scuba dive, although rarely at the same time ;)).  One of my friends has climbed Mount Fuji, and I do not recall him saying it was that high!

Another thing that I found interesting, and which stirred memories for me, was how narrow the footpaths were.  Friends had mentioned that when discussing the horribly overused trope in anime/manga of someone being killed in our world and reincarnating in another world as the hero of the story - they had said how narrow the area to walk was, but until the tour that the kid with the bicycle did, I don't think I had had a good view of how narrow they are.

It stirred up memories because when I was about 8-10, we used to go stay with a great aunt in Northumberland and her drive let straight on to the old A1 Road, and lorries used to roar and thunder along it, and the pavement* was really narrow - not Tokyo neighbourhood level of narrow, but still really narrow for being by a main road with freight lorries roaring by at 60 mph...

* In the UK, the piece the pedestrians walk on is called the pavement, which led to an old joke about "keep death off the roads - drive on the pavement!" which would massively confuse most Americans of course.