Yanagawa with the Sagemon girls….why don’t all cities do this?
Yanagawa is a city located in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. As of April 30, 2011, the city has an estimated population of 71,848, with 24,507 households and a population density of 934.55 persons per km². The total area is 76.88 km².
It is a popular city with Japanese tourists because of its 470 km of wide canals. Riverboats, called “donkobune”, are used to take tourists around the city. In 1987 a video documentary was created by Studio Ghibli about these canals and their restoration.
Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago of 6,852 islands. The four largest from north to south are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan’s land area. Honshu, the largest island land mass comprises approximately four-fifths of Japan’s total area. It is home to the capital city of Tokyo (located in the centre on the east side), Japan’s largest lake, Lake Biwa, and the country’s highest mountain, Mount Fuji. Japan’s population of 126 million is the world’s tenth largest. Approximately 9.1 million people live in the core city ofTokyo,[10] the capital city, which is the sixth largest city proper in the OECD. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the world’s largest metropolitan area with over 35 million residents and the world’s largest urban agglomeration economy.
