Japan, the official name of which is the State of Japan, is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Japanese archipelago, it borders the Sea of Japan to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east, and also extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the northeast to the East China and Philippine Seas in the southwest. Part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, Japan encompasses an archipelago of 6,852 islands; the five main islands, from north to south, are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa.
