I was pretty surprised when I found out the total Japanese island count. Have any of you been to more than two?

Is it my client or has this image been compressed to death?

That was my bad, thanks. I just uploaded a much higher res image.

Is it my client or has this image been compressed to death?

Looks okay to me? It's a bit over compressed but not too badly, as far as I can tell.

Anything interesting on Okinawa?

I hear the architecture, statues and food are fairly unique among Japan and that in general people seem to be more chill, and all the Okinawan Islands reputedly have a more tropical island vibe.

i haven't been there yet myself, and actually I don't know anybody who has, but it does seem worth visiting.

Yeah and hours before you said this, op fixed the issue and said so here. Why make this comment?

Never been any of Japans islands, sadly.

I liked James May's "Our man in Japan".
He tries to show the various different parts of Japan and travels from northeast to southwest, visiting all four of the main islands.

Oh and... Happy cake day. 🎂

Thanks. That series looks good, I'm interested in the our man in India now as well.

Heck yeah we are!

That's actually making me wonder now if I walked to any of the tiny close islands connected to shore during earlier trips.

Thanks for the fix. Now I can actually see the islands :D.

And no, I wasn't aware of that before. Very interesting!

For sure, I must have saved the thumbnail instead of the image originally.

I had no idea there were this many islands here. The distance I've traveled across Honshu is considerable, but my lackluster island count is looming large in my mind now.

I was initially planning on Sapporo this trip, but then found out that a lot of Hokkaido architecture is less traditionally Japanese since it's the most recently populated and developed main island, but it still sounds great for all the natural beauty. I'll likely go to Hokkaido or Kyushu next time, good choices. I don't know anything about Kyushu, but being part of Japan, it's got to also be great.

lackluster island count is looming large in my mind now.

If you visited one island per day, it'd take you almost 40 years to see them all. So... I wouldn't worry about it ;).

Ha, yea. Maybe I can visit 15 and see a little over 1% of the islands. That sounds like a fun goal.

There's actually a ferry nearby that goes to Deer Island, I'll give that a whirl first.

15 would be about 1‰ ... It's just a lot of islands :-/

1% seems a lot more doable than 14,000 more. And the locals told me a couple weeks ago about bunny island and deer island, so I'll start small and work my way up.

Sure... It's just that 15 isn't one percent, it's one permille. See the sign after my "1"? There's an "0" more in the subscript ;). You'd have to visit 142 islands to reach a full percent.

oh, right. I'm good with a permille too, any roundish representative portion works for me.

Yea, the Ainu and their ancestors... Lemme check, I was just reading about them. Emishi. And then their ancestors can be definitively traced back to about 35000 BCE right now, a bunch of islanders likely from mainland East Asia.

Sapporo itself was only built in 1870s ish, so as a modern city so recently colonized by Japan, apparently it's a lot more European boxy-looking rather than tiles and sloping roofs everywhere. Still looks like a cool city, very different architecture than much of the rest of Japan.

Great statistic from wikivoyage: "Sapporo's population has grown from seven in 1857 to nearly 2 million in 2021."