Page 3 - Japan Destination Guide - Alluring Asia

POPULATION HISTORY Japan has a population of 128 Traditional Japanese legend maintains that Japan was founded in 600 BC million. Making it the world's tenth by the Emperor Jimmu a direct descendant of the sun goddess and most populated country. Its size can ancestor of the present ruling imperial family. About AD 405 the Japanese be attributed to fast growth rates court officially adopted the Chinese writing system. During the sixth experienced during the late 19th and century Buddhism was introduced. These two events revolutionized early 20th centuries. Japanese culture and marked the beginning of a long period of Chinese cultural influence. From the establishment of the first fixed capital at TIME Nara in 710 until 1867 the emperors of the Yamato dynasty were the Japan Standard Time is 9 hours nominal rulers but actual power was usually held by powerful court ahead of Greenwich Mean Time himajin regents or "shoguns" (military governors). (GMT +9). US Eastern Standard Time + 13 hours. US Pacific Standard Time During the early part of the 17th century Japan's shogunate suspected + 16 hours. that foreign traders and missionaries were actually forerunners of a PAGE 3-4 military conquest by European powers. This caused the shogunate to Population | Time | Visas VISAS Insurance | History place foreigners under progressively tighter restrictions. Ultimately Japan Passport and onward/return ticket forced all foreigners to leave and barred all relations with the outside required. Visa not required for PAGE 5 tourist/commercial business stay of world except for severely restricted commercial contacts with Dutch and History | Religion up to 90 days. Chinese merchants at Nagasaki. This isolation lasted for 200 years until PAGE 6 Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy forced the opening of Japan Health | Language to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. INSURANCE PAGE 7 You should consider the benefits of Climate Within several years renewed contact with the West profoundly altered travel insurance as part of your Japan Japanese society. The shogunate was forced to resign and the emperor travel planning. Plans may include PAGE 8 was restored to power. The "Meiji restoration" of 1868 initiated many valuable medical expense coverage, The Land | The People trip interruption, medical emergency reforms. The feudal system was abolished and numerous Western PAGE 9 assistance and treatment services, institutions were adopted including a Western legal system and Currency | Credit Cards evacuation and more. constitutional government along quasi-parliamentary lines. Changing Money | Tipping PAGE 10 In 1898 the last of the "unequal treaties" with Western powers was Etiquette | Taxis removed signaling Japan's new status among the nations of the world. In Safety & Crime a few decades by creating modern social educational economic military and industrial systems the Emperor Meiji's "controlled revolution" had PAGE 11-12 Communications | What to Pack transformed a feudal and isolated state into a world power. Health & Vaccinations Wars With China and Russia PAGE 13 Shopping | Customs Japanese leaders of the late 19th century regarded the Korean Peninsula as a "dagger pointed at the heart of Japan." It was over Korea that Japan PAGE 14-16 became involved in war with the Chinese Empire in 1894-95 and with Food & Drinks Russia in 1904-05. The war with China established Japan's dominant PAGE 17 interest in Korea while giving it the Pescadores Islands and Formosa Culture & The Arts | Religion (now Taiwan). After Japan defeated Russia in 1905 the resulting Treaty of Portsmouth awarded Japan certain rights in Manchuria and in southern Sakhalin which Russia had received in 1875 in exchange for the Kurile Islands. Both wars gave Japan a free hand in Korea which it formally annexed in 1910.