Population: Japan’s population, is currently at 127,417,240 (2005 est.). Despite the high level of social, medical and industrial progress in the late 20th century and the associated population boom, Japan has seen in recent years a slowing down of population; for 2005 the estimate is 0.05% as opposed to 0.18% in 2000. In fact due to the high average life span (male 77.86; female 84.61) and low fertility, Japan’s elderly population is growing while the younger population is shrinking which will play havoc with the countries social security system unless changes are made.

In terms of agriculture, Japan has only a very small number of people employed; around 5%. In fact a significant quota of Japan’s staple food, rice is imported from overseas.

Due to the very small area of habitable land, around 80 million of Japan’s urban population are concentrated on the Pacific shore of Honshu and in northern Kyushu. Metropolitan Tokyo with approximately 12 million; Yokohama with 3,555,473; Osaka 2,624,129; Nagoya 2,190,549; Sapporo 1,854,837; Kobe 1,513,967; Kyoto 1,466,163; Fukuoka 1,325,611; Kawasaki 1,290,426; and Kitakyushu with 1,000,211 each account for part of this population (Wikipedia.org).

Japan has one of the highest population densities in the world ranking 1 above India with 329.5 persons per square kilometre of total land area; while this number reaches 1,523 persons per square kilomtre for land that is actually habitable (Wikipedia.org).

Foreign Nationals in Japan: More than 2.5 million registered foreign nationals.. 1 million of these foreigners are represented by Koreans from both North and South Korea, 500,000 Filipinos, 500,000 Chinese, 250,000 Brazilian with others like Peruvian, Australian, American, Canadian, British, Indonesian, Thai, African and other nationals
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Religion: The two main religions in Japan are Buddhism and Shintoism. Other religions include Christianity, Judaism, Confucianism and Islam but are all practiced to a lesser extent than the two mainstays of Japanese historical and cultural development.

Language: The first language is of course Japanese with a heavy emphasis on English as the second language. This can be evidenced in the governments strong push through the education system to have students learn on a compulsory basis.