Japan Trivia – Interesting Facts about Japan Vol. 3

●　Japanese people spend, on average, 30 minutes taking their daily baths. Over 20 percent of people spend more than 45 minutes. Seventy-five percent of people take a bath every day.

●　Forty-two million bottles and cans of beverages are purchased from vending machines on an average day.

●　Every day, 2,700 babies are born and 3,500 people pass away.

●　If the population decreases at the present rate, Japan’s population 50 years from now will be 80 million. (The current population is 126 million.) In the 27th century, the population will be only two million.

●　The total length of the seashore in Japan is longer than that of the seashore in the US.

●　The top of Mount Fuji is not public property. It is private property owned by a shrine. It does not belong either to Yamanashi Prefecture  or Shizuoka   Prefecture meaning it is not a part of any prefecture.

●　In most Japanese households, husbands give all the money they earn to their wives, who control all the expenditures in the family. Wives usually give back a small amount of money to their husbands as an allowance.

●　Japanese workers spend an average of 590 yen on lunch.

● Many Japanese are Buddhists and are given Buddhist names (posthumous names) when they die. The names are composed of kanji letters (ideograms – Chinese characters that have certain meanings) and letters that reflect the sort of life one has lived. In addition, depending on how much money the family wants to spend, some good characters are used.
By looking at a name, it is possible to determine the amount of money that was paid to the temple or to the priest to get that name. The prices for a posthumous name range from 100,000 yen to over 1,000,000 yen. However, if one does not care about such things, it is not necessary to have a posthumous name.

● Every once in a while, Japan experiences large-scale volcanic eruptions. Some of these volcanoes are located near tourist sites or places where people go mountain climbing. Sometimes, there are victims. For example, in 2014 Mount Ontake in Nagano Prefecture erupted and killed 63 people.

●　Mount Fuji is classified as an active volcano. The last time it erupted was in 1707.

●　The Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was originally a production exhibition hall named Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall (designed by a Czech architect and built in 1915). It was the only building left standing in the hypocenter (i.e., the area where the bomb was dropped).