Japan, also known as Nihon or Nippon in Japanese, is an island country in East Asia. Situated in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of China, Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea in the south. Japan consists of four main islands: Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku which running from north to south. About 70% to 80% of the country is forested, mountainous, and unsuitable for agricultural, industrial, or residential use. This is because of the generally steep elevations, climate and risk of landslides caused by earthquakes, soft ground and heavy rain. This has resulted in an extremely high population density in the habitable zones that are mainly located in coastal areas.

Japan is the thirtieth most densely populated country in the world, its population is approximated at around 128 million. For the majority, Japanese society is linguistically and culturally uniform with only small populations of alien workers, Zainichi Koreans, Japanese Chinese, Japanese Filipinos, Japanese Brazilians and others. Japan also has indigenous minority groups such as the Ainu and Ryukyuans, as well as social minority groups like the burakumin.

Japan promotes the acceptance of foreign students from several nations around the world, approximately 90% of them come from other parts of Asia (approximately 53% come from either China or Taiwan and 23% from the Republic of Korea); 1.7% come from countries in Latin America, 1.0 % come from the United States; 8.8% come from France; 4.38% come from Germany; and 3.84% come from Britain. By comparison to the situation in the other major industrialized countries, the proportion of government-sponsored scholarship students is relatively high, but increases in the overall numbers of foreign students accepted have been held in check by Japan's high cost of living and poor economic climate, and it can scarcely be said that the present total is satisfactory.

Nihon ni Irashaimasu!