Doing business in Asia, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Russia.

Contrary to most responses that I get, there is a more exact answer to the question of where is Japan than "over there."

 Also, Japan is not part of the Asian continent.  Nor are Japanese, Koreans and Chinese all part of one country. It amazes me how many 'intelligent' people think that.

 Japan is an island chain - archipelago - off the coast of eastern Asia. Japan has a mindset that they call an island (shimaguni) mentality. I will explain in a future blog.

Japan is its own country and has a population of more than 120 million people, a little less than half the population of the United States.

 However, the land mass of Japan is smaller than the state of California , a little bigger than New Zealand or Italy. 60% of Japan is mountains, meaning a whole lot of people live in an area quite small. Think of half the population of American all living in Southern California .  Presently Southern CA has about 10-15 million people. Now imagine wherever you see one person walking the streets in LA, think of 10 times that many. That’s what it’s like in downtown Tokyo or Osaka .

 These 'tight quarters,' if you will, make for interesting social phenomenon. This is important to understand if you have it in mind to do business with these find people.

 Oh, yeah. The center of the Japanese islands are at 36 degree north latitude. If you head west from  you will go across the sea of Japan, through China, then Iran, Athens and end up at the southern tip of Italy. If you head east from Japan you will reach San Francisco and then eventually end up in New York . Paris is on the same latitude as Hokkaido . And London is at the same latitude as the northern most tip of Hokkaido.

 Here is a cool map of the world for reference.  http://go.hrw.com/atlas/norm_htm/world.htm

 Question: How long does it take to get to Japan?