Welcome to Numazu!

Numazu-shi (city), written in kanji The first (Numa) means 'swamp' or 'marsh' and the second (Tsu) means 'harbor' or 'ferry'.  The last kanji (shi) means 'city'.  Neat, huh?  Hehe

I know it's not the best quality, but it's the classic shot of Numazu.  Here, you can see the city sprawlled out at the feet of it's own mountains, and Mt Fuji towering behind them, with the Kano River snaking up from Suruga Bay.

Numazu City is (I'm sure you know) part of the island nation of Japan.  Japan is 1/25th the size of America--about the same size as California.  However, Japan is one of the larger nations; larger (in landmass) than Italy, Germany, or the British Isles (including Ireland). The population is about half of the US's and twice that of Britain, France of Italy-about 125 million.  On top of that, about 75% of Japan is too mountainous to inhabit.  The US's population density is about 72 people per square mile, while Japan's is 861/sq mi.  Today, about 25% of that population is over 65, which is causing many problems. Japan is made of more than 7,000 islands; the four main ones are: Hokkaido (the northernmost), Honshu (the largest), Kyushu (the southernmost) and Shikoku (the smallest).

Numazu is in Shizuoka Prefecture, on the east coast of the main island, Honshu.  Shizuoka is home to Mt. Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan, and is quite close to Tokyo.  Among the 47 prefectures, Shizuoka is the 10th largest, with about 3% of Japan's population (3.7 million as of 2000).  The capital is Shizuoka City.

Here is "Shizuoka" written in kanji:

The first kanji (Shizu) means 'quiet, peaceful'.  Oka doesn't seem to be in my dictionary... and the last kanji is 'ken', which means 'prefecture'.

Numazu!

And now.....

Numazu City: The dot near the center is the city hall building, which is about a 15 minute bike ride from my apartment. There are about 210,000 people in Numazu. (Compared to 80,000 in Kalamazoo, MI--Numazu's Sister City!)

Shizuoka Prefecture, with Numazu City highlighted.

Part of Numazu is on the Izu Penninsula, which is well-known for its hot springs!  Yay!

This is nice, but I came for PICTURES!

This is the symbol of Numazu.  It incorporates the katakana character "nu" with the image of the pine tree, Numazu's city tree.  There are many pine forestes covering the mountains of Numazu.