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Bill Belew has raised 2 bi-cultural kids, now 34 and 30. And he and his wife are now parenting a 3rd, Mia, who is 8.

World_Map-cute

World Map – Asia

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 an 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 degrees 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?

 

Talk to Bill and others about their experiences raising bi-cultural Japanese-American kids.

Bill Belew

Daddy and Christian.

No Comments

  • Bill says:

    Hey Maria,
    Thank you for the welcome. Perhaps if you have business info about the PI that you would like to share, I welcome all input.

    When I was in the Navy we visited the PI many many times…Olongapo, Subic Bay and Manila mostly. There was good and bad in that.

    I see that you write runwayscoop also…my wife worked as a fashion designer for nearly 10 years in Hong Kong. I would love to get the two of you together.

  • Anonymous says:

    Sorry to admit that I’m one of those ignorant people who would have flunked a geography test on Japan. I’m not even positive that, given an unmarked map, I would have been able to pinpoint the country’s GENERAL locale! How sad is that?? Lisa

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