Resources on Japan's Geography Please!

Recently on Wanikani and other learning platforms I’ve been using, Japan’s geography and topography has been mentioned a lot and I didn’t know practically any of it. Thanks to that I’ve realized how little I know about Japan’s land, its’ biodiversity, its’ terrain. So I would really welcome any good resources you guys know about Japan’s geography…books or websites or online classes or nature documentaries. The most comprehensive thing I’ve found is on Wikipedia, so I would greatly appreciate any good recommendations. Thank you very much!

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I’d recommend Japanese geography books for kids!
You can try searching “都道府県” (the word for the 47 subdivisions of Japan, like how the US has 50 states) in a site like amazon or bookwalker, etc., and you can find a lot of kids’ geography books that can help you learn names and specialties of all the regions of Japan.
I had a lot of fun with this one for example but it looks like maybe it’s out of print now… Plenty of other options though!
What I did was put all the 都道府県 in my anki deck, and then as they came up I read the relevant section of the book and filled in a patchwork of areas I knew a little bit about over a long period of time. But I’m sure one could get something out of it just browsing slowly through it as well.

I figure it’s an area where by its nature there’s just going to be far more and better options in Japanese than English, and having access to that is part of the fun of learning the language! (the same holds for Japanese history, etc.)
Non-fiction for kids is also clearly explained and furigana heavy, without as much of the problem of too-casual kanjiless speech that say, picture books often have.

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I have no idea about the general quality of these videos, but you might get some nice impressions from this search: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=日本田舎

Other than that, I recently watched an interesting documentary on German TV but it will probably not be available to you… :cry:

This one is cool. It gives you native pronunciation of prefectures as well as kanji breakdown and cool facts about each :slight_smile:

Japan’s Prefectures

Japanese Regions is a good website that breaks Japan into regions and you can look at one region at a time. You can also explore unique tourist options!

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Hello rodan! Forgive me for the late reply, I’ve been unable to answer these great responses the past few days I’m sorry for being so rude.
Thank you so much for the recommendation, I really like Yasuo Hasegawa’s children books, they look really enjoyable and I can’t wait to get started with them. And thankfully, most of them are available on amazon to buy.
Ah, that’s a good idea, I’ll do that. Plus I’ve barely started on Wanikani so this will occupy me for a while.
Yess definitely. It will be a nice challenge, since I haven’t tried tackling an entire publication in Japanese before. I honestly would have never tried doing so if you hadn’t mentioned this, so thank you!

Hi NicoleRauch, I’m very sorry for the late reply! Thanks for taking the time to write.
Sounds great, thank you :blush: Haha, no likely not plus I don’t speak German.

Apologies for the late reply, Kinozato! I really appreciate the recommendation, I’ll be bookmarking this since its perfect for learning the basic geography. Thanks!

Hi Barmy, I apologize for the late reply to your comment! Thank you so much for reminding me of Japanguide.com, they have really nicely organized information on there. That sounds perfect, thanks :smile:

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