Other assorted trivia includes:-*1% of Japanese people are Christian. *10 million Japanese people play golf. *20 million practice flower arranging. *Over 90% of Japanese children watch more than one hour of TV everyday. *Over 50% of Japanese children play TV games for more than one hour everyday. *82.5% of households have a car. *50% of households have a PC. *78% of households have a VCR. *36% of households have a video camera. *54% of Japanese men and 14% of women are smokers. *The average Japanese person has 112 days holiday a year. *The "average" Japanese company employee takes only half of his paid vacations. *The average salary in Japan is 589,000 yen per month. (Around 3000 pounds, depending on the exchange rate.) *The average Japanese home costs 40million yen, about 200,000 pounds. That does not include the price of the land on which the house is built *The average Japanese land price is the highest in the world. *The average Tokyo dwelling occupies an area of just 56 square meters. *....while the national average is 91 square meters. *The Greater Tokyo district occupies only 4% of Japan but holds 25% of the population. *With 1.5 million passengers passing through everyday, Tokyo's Shinjuku station is said to be the busiest in the world. *The longest traffic jam in the history of Japan (and possibly the world) was 84 miles long and involved 15,000 vehicles. All as a result of a typhoon, apparently. *Since 1998, over 30,000 Japanese people have comitted suicide yearly. 70% were male and 75% were over 40 years old. The number of deaths by suicide is three times that by auto accident. *The average Japanese person makes love 37 times a year. *The average Japanese woman gives birth to 1.4 children. *800,000 Japanese maried in 2001. 15% for the second time. *The average Japanese man weds at the age of 28 while his female counterpart marries at 27. *Approximately 10% of Japanese couples have their first child within 6 months of getting married. *Japan has a force of 263,400 police officers and.. *An estimated 81,000 Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) members, of whom *10,000 were arrested in 1998. *158 handgun felonies were committed in Japan in1998,compared to 364,776 in th USA. *In 2000 there were 3.26 million reported criminal cases - up10% on 1999. *Arrests were made in 23.6% of the cases. *Though the general crime rate in Japan remains low, the murder rate of Japan exceeds that of Australia and England. *Japanese law courts do not use a trail by jury system. Guilt or innocence is determined by a panel of judges *A full 99% of criminal cases brought before the courts result in a conviction. *Until the laws were revised in 1908, a husband could legitimately kill an adulterous wife and also her lover and would remain safe from prosecution. *Japan has 86 active volcanoes. *The last eruption of Mt. Fuji occurred in 1707. *Around 2.5 million people visit Mt Fuji every year. *Though most earthquakes are unpredictable, some erupt to schedule. Mt Usu every 40 years and Miyake every 20 years. *The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 killed more that 150,000 people in the Tokyo area. *Even withstanding modern building codes it is believed that a 7.2 magnitude quake in the same region would cause 7000 deaths and leave around 2.5 million homeless. *The Kobe earthquake on January 19, 1995 killed 6,500 people. *Japan produces only 40% of the calories it consumes. *Japan is the worlds largest importer of foodstuffs. *The average Japanese farm is a tiny 1.4 hectares. *Taking 15% of the world's total catch, Japan is the largest sea fishing industry in the world. *Unlike his American counterpart who only indulges 4 times a year, the average Japanese person eats noodles about once a week. *The constitution of Japan forbids war. *The Japanese defence budget ($48.5Bn in 1998) exceeds that of Great Britain. *Japan posesses enough weapons grade plutonium to produce between 3 and 4 thousand nuclear warheads. *Japan and Russia have not yet signed a peace treaty. *Japanese women were not allowed to vote until 1946. *Compulsory education starts at age 7 and lasts for nine years.Elementary school lasts for 6 years, followed by three years at junior high school. *Over 90% of junior high graduates students attend senior high school ( three years). *Approximately 40% of high school graduates attend some kind of college. *The biggest box office hit in Japan (22million vievers) was 'Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi',released on July 20, 2001. *The most popular foreign movie of all time was 'Titanic'. *The very first baseball game to be televised was - somewhat surprisingly - not in the United States, but in Toyko. *On Sept 16, 2002 the world's oldest person, Kamato Hongo, celebrated her 115th birthday. She apparently sleeps for two days and then stays up for two days. *About 15,000 Japanese people are over one hundred years old. 80% are female. *It is believed that drinking 5 to 6 cups of Japanese green tea each day will greatly reduce the chances of developing skin cancer. *Recent studies show that eating raw fish regularly can reduce the probability of developing lung cancer. *The Japanese health ministry finally approved the use of the contraceptive pill in 1999 - after many years of controversy. *In the same year the Japanese health ministry approved the use of Viagara -after six months and no controversy. *The Japanese health ministry is staffed with ageing men (unverified). *Anyone who has resided in the UK is prohibited from being a blood donor. (It's all to do with mad cows.) *The Japanese delicacy fugu - otherwise known as pufferfish or blowfish - contains the powerful poison tetrodotoxin in it's intestines and ovaries. The first symptoms are a numbness of the tongue and lips. If untreated total paralysis and death quickly follows. The worst year in recent memory was 1958, when a total of 176 people died from eating fugu. *Japan's second heart transplant operation took place in Feb 1999. The first - in 1968 - resulted in the surgeon being charged with murder on suspicion that the donor was not brain dead, followed by a thirty year taboo. *Around 20 million people use internet capable Docomo i-mode mobile phones. *Docomo is wholly owned by NTT, the Japanese telecommunications giant. *The Japanese government owns a 51% stake in NTT. *Unlike governments in nations such as the UK (where mobile phones carry a health warning) the Japanese government insists there is no link between mobile phones and brain cancer. 
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