Air and water temperatures vary quite a bit from south to north, but swimming can be enjoyed in most places at least from mid July through August. Particularly noteworthy for beachgoers are the rugged Uradome Coast in Tottori Prefecture and the sand beaches of Niigata Prefecture. Ask in our forum.

Home Back. Okinawa Prefecture. Okinawa Main Island has many white sand beaches, of which some are owned by the large resort hotels located right by the beach. Resort beaches are open to everyone, although some charge for beach access.

While most of the beaches are for swimming and sunbathing, others offer snorkeling opportunities. See our separate page about beaches on Okinawa Main Island for more details. The Kerama Islands are only about 40 kilometers west of the main island of Okinawa, and offer white sand beaches and clear blue waters ideal for sunbathing, swimming, snorkeling and diving.

Corals and coral reef fish can be seen close to shore, and sea turtles can even be spotted near some beaches. There are three main beaches on Kume Island that offer swimming and snorkeling opportunities.

Not far away is a seven kilometer long white sand bar known as Hatenohama Beach shown in image , which can only be accessed by boat tours. Miyako Island is the fourth largest island in Okinawa Prefecture , and is known for having some of the best beaches in Japan and as a great destination for snorkeling and diving.

There are picturesque sand beaches for swimming and sunbathing, and coral reefs for snorkeling. Ishigaki Island offers several nice beaches and good snorkeling in the coral reefs which surround nearly every beach on the island. Kabira Bay, considered Ishigaki Island's most scenic view, does not allow swimming or snorkeling but there are glass bottom boat rides available for those who want to explore the bay.

Kagoshima Prefecture. Located in Kagoshima Prefecture north of Okinawa , Amami Oshima offers a many large and beautiful white-sand beaches along its coastline.

Some offer nice snorkeling opportunities. Amami's beaches tend to be less crowded than the ones in Okinawa. Odaiba has an meter long, man-made beach near the Decks shopping mall, with public facilities like showers and toilets. Swimming is not allowed at the beach, and most people go there to enjoy the sun and sand, and participate in activities like beach volleyball. Rainbow Bridge and the skyscrapers of Tokyo are visible from the beach, making it a nice spot to see sunsets.

The beaches of Kamakura are about 20 minutes from Kamakura Station by foot. Even though the sand is not white, the beaches are still very popular during the summer months and get crowded with locals and visitors from Tokyo and Yokohama. Rental shops and temporary beach huts open for business during the swimming season, and public facilities include showers and toilets.

Near Kamakura. Beaches line the entire coast to the east and west of Enoshima. Directly next to Enoshima are two popular swimming beaches which are patrolled by lifeguards and are lined by restaurants and temporary beach huts that play popular music and rent deck chairs and parasols to beachgoers during the summer holidays.

The beaches further away are also popular surfing spots. To be fair, demand for tuna has soared around the world in emulation of Japanese culinary trends, and in particular the economic rise of China has put immense pressure on the global trade in tuna and other high-quality seafood. The warm Kuroshio swirls together with the cold Oyashio to create giant oceanic eddies gyres where fish breed and also where nuclear contaminants concentrate.

The exact level of contamination is unclear, and the Japanese government has been anything but forthcoming in providing in-depth details and analysis of the disaster.

What is known is that the contamination from Fukushima is now ranked second only to the nuclear plant disaster at Chernobyl in the Ukraine. However important fisheries resources may be, they are only a small part of these international debates. Questions of nationalism and national pride, and access to undersea mineral rights, are more critical than fishing rights per se. The 1. In addition to the potential for fisheries, new technologies will make way for mining of minerals from deep ocean waters, giant floating water turbines are envisioned from electrical generation, great untapped sources of geothermal and wind energy may be found or sited in Japanese waters, and the potential for and profit from refined seawater desalination are incalculable.

Going forward, global warming and the melting of the Antarctic icecap are now estimated to be unstoppable, with sea levels projected to rise ten feet over the next century.

The threat of rising seas is grave for many nations, and Japan—with its population, industries, and other critical infrastructure largely clustered in low-lying coastal areas—will surely be dramatically affected by global climate change. Accuracy or the lack thereof of these dire predictions notwithstanding, anyone who desires to understand Japanese culture will do well to always consider the historic and contemporary significant influences of the sea upon human life on the archipelago.

By the eighteenth century, European and North American long-distance whaling took place on an increasingly global scale. In , Japan sent its first whaling fleet to Antarctica with large factory ships that processed captured whales on board.

In , occupied Japan signed the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, and in , Japanese resumed factory ship whaling in the North Pacific.

However, by the end of that decade, the International Whaling Commission IWC , an international commission formed in to oversee whaling quotas, stock management, and conservation, began the attempt to introduce strict international regulations.

As whaling stocks became radically depleted due to over-exploitation, international sentiment supported a IWC moratorium on pelagic whaling. In , the IWC institutionalized zero-catch policies, ostensibly limiting whaling to subsistence aboriginal whaling. The highly controversial practice was globally debated, condemned, and openly opposed by groups like Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Japan largely ignored the protests until March 31, , when the International Court of Justice, the main UN judicial organ, declared the practice illegal; since then some nationalist politicians have vowed Japan will continue whaling. Map of Japan. Hiroshige print of the islands of Matsushima in Mutsu Province. Japan and the West In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Japan came into contact with two of the great European maritime empires of the era, the Portuguese and the Dutch.

Sunday in Yokohama by Utagawa Sadahide —ca. This image includes Chinese and Indian servants. The Tsukiji Market as seen from Shiodome. If one needs any proof of the abundance and variety of fish, shellfish, and other marine products in the daily diets of Japanese, one need only look through the stalls of the famous Tsukiji Market.

William M. Tsutsui and Vuorisalo. Nearly all of Japan's remaining forests are situated in mountainous areas. Many are under official protection as national parks and Forest Ecosystem Reserves. Continuing threats to the forests include construction of dams, roads, and recreational areas.

Foothills border the coastal plains of Japan. Away from the coasts, ascending terraces mark the foothills, which provide a transition from these plains to the mountain ranges. On the approaches to the mountains, the slopes become steeper and are laced by numerous watercourses, isolating groups of hills. The Hakone hills, in central Honshu, are typical of this type of terrain.

The Japanese islands are essentially the summits of submerged mountain ridges that have been uplifted near the outer edge of the Asian continental shelf. Consequently, mountains take up some 75 percent of the land. A long spine of mountain ranges runs roughly north to south down the middle of the archipelago, dividing it into two halves. Although the mountains are steep, most of them are not very high. Central Honshu Island, however, has a convergence of three mountain chains, the Akaishi, Kiso, and Hida, forming the Japanese Alps, which include many peaks that exceed 3, meters 10, feet.

Snow lingers late into spring on the Japanese Alps, but there are no true glaciers in Japan. The highest point in the country is the renowned Mount Fuji Fujiyama , a symmetrical dormant volcano that rises to 3, meters 12, feet in central Honshu, outside of the Japanese Alps. Ten percent of the world's volcanoes are found in Japan. Of Japan's known volcanoes, 20 have been active since the beginning of the twentieth century. The mountainous areas of Japan contain wide craters and cones of every form, ranging from the ash cone of Mount Fuji on Honshu to the volcanic dome of Daisetsu on Hokkaido.

Landslides that shake loose entire mountainsides are generally composed of clay and may reach depths of 6 to 23 meters 20 to 75 feet , widths of several hundred feet, and lengths up to 4 kilometers 2. Such landslides are especially frequent on the Sea of Japan side of Honshu. Japan's rivers have cut deep gorges through the mountain ranges.

Kurobe Gorge, in central Honshu, is Japan's deepest, plunging 1, to 2, meters 4, to 6, feet. It has a dam at its south end. Dakigaeri Gorge is a national park in northern Honshu. Volcanic activity has shaped many of Japan's plateaus, while others consist of ancient limestone. The Hachimantai Plateau, volcanic in origin, in northern Honshu, is 1, to 1, meters 4, to 5, feet above sea level. The Akiyoshi-dai Plateau of western Honshu is a limestone platform that is riddled with caves.

The Atetsu Plateau, in the same region, is also limestone-based. Tsujunkyo Bridge is Japan's largest stone-arch aqueduct bridge.

The bridge has been used since to bring water into Yabe town from the Shiroito Plateau over the deep ravine formed by the Todoroki River. The aqueduct is a vital source of drinking water and of irrigation waters for rice farms.

The Seikan Submarine Tunnel, completed in March , is the longest tunnel in the world. The length of the tunnel is The railway track also runs meters feet below the sea surface, making it the deepest rail track in the world. The Tokyo Bay Aqualine Expressway, completed in , includes the fourth-longest vehicular tunnel in the world.

The kilometer 9. The expressway includes a 4. The bridge and tunnel areas meet at the artificial island of Umi-hotaru, lying in Tokyo Bay. The Akashi Kaikyo Bridge that links the city of Kobe with Awaji-shima Island is currently the world's longest suspension bridge. Two main towers suspend two thick cables to create the 1,meter- 6,feet- long bridge.

Italy expects to complete construction of a larger suspension bridge in Japan is very prone to earthquakes, with more than fifteen hundred of them recorded annually. Most of these are minor tremors, but the occasional major earthquake can result in thousands of deaths. The Great Kanto Earthquake of was one of the most destructive of all time, causing powerful tremors and resulting in fires that destroyed most of Tokyo and Yokohama, with a loss of more than one hundred thousand lives.

More recently, the Kobe earthquake on January 17, , which measured 7. Japan has become a world leader in researching the causes and prediction of earthquakes, as well as in the construction of earthquake-proof buildings. Booth, Alan. Tokyo: Kodansha International, Bornoff, Nicholas. The National Geographic Traveler: Japan.