Wild Japan

Honshu is Japan's largest island, where over 100 million people live in an area one-sixth the size of France. The landscape is the most extreme of approximately 6800 Japanese islands, with some of the coldest and snowiest places in the whole of Japan in the north around Aomori or in the central Japanese ‘Alps’. It also has some of the highest recorded summer temperatures during the humid spell of July and August, when the rains that previously fell during the short June rainy season cease. In these areas are found black bears, serow and macaques while in cities like Tokyo, a raccoon dog, called a tanuki can be found.

The islands comprise the fourth-largest island, Kyushu, and all the small islands beyond including the most populous, Okinawa, to Yonaguni which lies only 80 km from Taiwan. Kyushu has the most active volcano in Japan, Sakurajima. Surrounded by mineral rich soil, giant vegetables are grown and people lie in the sand heated ground.

Hokkaido is the large island to the north separated from the rest of Japan by a deep ocean trench. Once connected to Siberia, the wildlife, brown bears, chipmunks, and others, crossed to the island before the last ice-age melted, severing the land.