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Housing in Japan includes modern and traditional styles. Two patterns of residences are predominant in contemporary Japan: the single-family detached house and the multiple-unit building, either owned by an individual or corporation and rented as apartments to tenants, or owned by occupants.
The term kanji in Japanese literally means "Han characters". It is written in Japanese by using the same characters as in traditional Chinese, and both refer to the character writing system known in Chinese as hanzi (traditional Chinese: 漢字; simplified Chinese: 汉字; pinyin: hànzì; lit. 'Han characters').
In Japanese, mobile phones are called keitai denwa (携帯電話), literally "portable telephones," and are often known simply as keitai (携帯). A majority of the Japanese population own cellular phones, most of which are equipped with enhancements such as video and camera capabilities.
Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 14,125 islands, with the four main islands being Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, and Kyushu. Tokyo is the country's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto .
Kamikaze was a reference to the two typhoons that sank or dispersed Kublai Khan 's invading Mongol fleets. The Japanese word kamikaze is usually translated as "divine wind" ( kami is the word for "god", "spirit", or "divinity", and kaze for "wind").
Japanese pitch accent (高低アクセント, kōtei akusento) is a feature of the Japanese language that distinguishes words by accenting particular morae in most Japanese dialects. The nature and location of the accent for a given word may vary between dialects.
Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard: hyōjungo (標準語), meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo (共通語), "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times.
Main article: Hometown tax. Since 2008, Japanese taxpayers have been allowed to pay 2,000 yen to redirect a portion of their income tax to one of the regions, instead of central government. Despite the name, there is no obligation for this to be the taxpayer's "home town".
Most national universities employ a 4-scale grading system (only with A, B, C and F). Below-average students are given an F, and are encouraged to retake the same subject (s) in the following semesters. GPA is a simple numerical representation of college results in Japan.
Modern Japan is home to one of the world's most developed transport networks. Mass transport is well developed in Japan, but the road system lags and is inadequate for the number of cars owned in Japan.