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Japan Capital Area Population Languages Currency |
Tokyo 377 975 km2 125 416 000 Japanese Yen (JPY) |
Japan is a densely-populated island country in the north-west Pacific Ocean. It comprises over 14 000 islands, the five largest of which are Honshu (the "mainland"), Hokkaido, Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa. Japan was governed in dictatorial fashion for centuries by a succession of warlords and emperors, culminating in the ill-fated decision to attempt to become an Asian superpower during World War II by invading the surrounding countries and declaring war on the USA and Great Britain. After being defeated in 1945, a democratic constitution was drawn up and since then Japan has been a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Japan has emerged from the ruins of the war to become a global leader in technological development and boasts the third biggest economy in the world (after the USA and China). Tokyo, Japan's capital city, is by far the most highly populated metropolitan area on Earth. | |
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| Last updated | : | 17h01, Tuesday 19 March 2024 |
| Location | : | Cape Town, South Africa |
This trip is still in the planning stages. But I hope to update the page at least every couple of days from 10 May onwards ...
[Wednesday 8 May 2024 : Cape Town, South Africa] This will be the start of a couple of days of hard travelling - first we are flying from Cape Town to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, landing there at 8 pm. From Addis Ababa we're flying across the Indian Ocean to Seoul in South Korea, followed by a short hop to Tokyo in Japan. A difference of seven time zones between South Africa and Japan means we'll land at Narita International Airport at the gritty hour of 8 pm on Thursday 9 May. It will be tough navigating the confusing labyrinth of public transport options in the biggest city on the planet, late at night, in the dark and tired from hours in the air, but hopefully we'll manage to find our way to the APA Hotel in the Asakusa district.
[Friday 10 May : Tokyo, Japan] A day of exploring Tokyo and recovering from jet lag.
[Saturday 11 May : Tokushima] A short flight of an hour will take us from Tokyo's Haneda Airport to Tokushima on Shikoku Island. We'll have a couple of days in Tokushima to prepare for our two week hike round the island - we plan to walk part of the Shikoku Henro, a Buddhist pilgrimage route that visits 88 temples over the course of 1200 kilometres.
:[Wednesday 5 June : Tokyo] A late night flight from Tokyo back to South Africa will leave us with several hours to explore a few sections of this massive city that we hadn't seen yet.
[Thursday 6 June 2024 : Cape Town, South Africa] If all goes according to plan (and from past experience I know that it seldom does), our return flight from Japan via Seoul (South Korea) and Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) will land in Cape Town at 1 pm.