Japan (Lonely Planet, 11th Edition) - Chris Rowthorn [0]
Destination Japan
Getting Started
Events Calendar
Itineraries
History
The Culture
Food & Drink
Environment
The Onsen
Skiing in Japan
Tokyo
Around Tokyo
Central Honshū
Kansai
Western Honshū
Northern Honshū
Hokkaidō
Shikoku
Kyūshū
Okinawa & the Southwest Islands
Directory
Transport
Health
Language
Glossary
The Authors
Behind the Scenes
Map Legend
Return to beginning of chapter
Destination Japan
* * *
FAST FACTS
Population: 127 million
Female life expectancy: 84.5 years
Literacy rate: 99%
GDP: US$3.7 trillion (estimated)
Latitude of Tokyo: 35.4°N, the same as Tehran, and about the same as Los Angeles (34.05°N) and Crete (35°N)
Islands in the Japanese archipelago: approximately 3900
Number of onsen (hot springs): more than 3000
World’s busiest station: Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station, servicing 740,000 passengers a day
Money spent on manga (comics) each year in Japan: ¥481 billion (about US$5 billion)
Cruising speed of the shinkansen (bullet train): 300km/h
* * *
Japan is a world apart – a wonderful little planet floating off the coast of mainland China. It is a kind of cultural Galapagos, a place where a unique civilisation was allowed to grow and unfold on its own, unmolested by invading powers. And while there has been a lot of input from both Western and Eastern cultures over the millennia, these have always been turned into something distinctly Japanese once they arrived on the archipelago.
Even today, the world struggles to categorise Japan: is it the world’s most advanced technological civilisation, or a bastion of traditional Asian culture? Has the country become just another outpost of the West, or is there something decidedly Eastern lurking under the veneer of its familiar modernity? There are no easy answers, but there is plenty of pleasure to be had in looking for them.
First and foremost, Japan is a place of delicious contrasts: ancient temples and futuristic cities; mist-shrouded hills and lightning-fast bullet trains; kimono-clad geisha and suit-clad businesspeople; quaint thatch-roofed villages and pulsating neon urban jungles. This peculiar synthesis of the modern and the traditional is one of the things that makes travel in Japan such a fascinating experience.
For all its uniqueness, Japan shares a lot with the wider world, and this includes the state of the economy. Japan has been severely affected by the worldwide recession that started with the US sub-prime loan crisis of 2008. Japan’s export-driven economy has always been sensitive to economic health of its trading partners, particularly the USA. Indeed, it has often been observed that when America sneezes, Japan catches a cold. And this time, Japan has caught a whopper.
As housing prices fell and the stock market tanked in the USA, America’s profligate consumers stopped buying Japanese products. The effect on the Japanese economy was almost immediate. Exports in January 2009 were down an astonishing 46% compared to the previous year. For a nation that exports about 20% of its total manufacturing output, this sort of decline can only be termed apocalyptic, and the bursting of Japan’s famous ‘Bubble Economy’ in the late ’80s is starting to look tame by comparison.
To add insult to injury, just as the world’s consumers have stopped buying Japanese products, the world’s currency traders have been snapping up the Japanese yen, making it one of the world’s most valuable currencies. This has made Japan’s exports even less attractive to foreign buyers. This one-two economic punch has left the nation reeling, and Japanese newspaper headlines are a daily litany of economic woes, from shrinking tax receipts, to massive layoffs, to huge corporate losses. It’s too early to tell how all of this will play out in the coming months and years, but one thing is certain: many businesses will probably close (including some listed in the pages of this guide).
To make matters worse, the present economic crisis is unfolding against a backdrop of two other severe problems: Japan’s low birth