Japan

Credit: Jeff Schmaltz; MODIS team; NASA, Posted on: Sunday, 2 December 2007, 10:42 CST Download full size image

A relatively clear day in Japan on November 25, 2007 gave the MODIS on the Aqua satellite this view. Japan is made up of over three thousand islands, but the largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku. In this image, Honshu (stretching across the top of the image), Shikoku (left middle, under some clouds and under Honshu), and part of Kyushu (left) are visible. Hokkaido is not shown.

The large city of Tokyo is visible on the far right side of the image as a large gray area. Just west of Tokyo is a green peninsula. If you look carefully, near the top of that green peninsula is a white dot - which is snow-capped Mt. Fuji. You can see it fairly easily on the 250m image. The white snow-cap stands out from the brown mountains surrounding it. Mountains cover two-thirds of the country’s land surface; each of the main islands has a central mountainous chain.

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