Tokyo

Japan is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north towards the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south.

Japan is part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 6852 islands covering 377,975 square kilometers (145,937 sq mi); the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu (the “mainland”), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is the nation’s capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe and Kyoto.

Tokyo, formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area (13,452 square kilometers or 5,194 square miles) is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 million residents as of 2018. The city became politically prominent in 1603, when it became the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. By the mid-18th century, Edo was one of the most populous cities in the world with a population of over one million people.