1.
Miyazaki Prefecture
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Miyazaki Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyushu. The capital is the city of Miyazaki, historically, after the Meiji Restoration, Hyūga Province was renamed Miyazaki Prefecture. It is one of two locations on Earth where the fungus Chorioactis geaster is found. Miyazaki is the home of the hyuganatsu fruit, nine cities are located in Miyazaki Prefecture, These are the towns and villages of each district, The sports teams listed below are based in Miyazaki. Honda Lock S. C. Miyazaki United F. C. Japan encyclopedia, ISBN 978-0-674-01753-5, OCLC58053128 Official Miyazaki Prefecture website Official Miyazaki Prefecture website Miyazaki and Vicinity Information from the JNTO
2.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
3.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
4.
Kyushu
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Kyushu is the third biggest island of Japan and most southwesterly of its four main islands. Its alternative ancient names include Kyūkoku, Chinzei, and Tsukushi-no-shima, the historical regional name Saikaidō referred to Kyushu and its surrounding islands. In the 8th century Taihō Code reforms, Dazaifu was established as an administrative term for the region. As of 2016, Kyushu has a population of 12,970,479, the island is mountainous, and Japans most active volcano, Mt Aso at 1,591 metres, is on Kyushu. There are many signs of tectonic activity, including numerous areas of hot springs. The most famous of these are in Beppu, on the east shore, the island is separated from Honshu by the Kanmon Straits. The name Kyūshū comes from the nine ancient provinces of Saikaidō situated on the island, Chikuzen, Chikugo, Hizen, Higo, Buzen, Bungo, Hyūga, Osumi, excepting Oita and Miyazaki cities, the eastern seaboard shows a general decline in population. Designated cities Fukuoka Kitakyushu Kumamoto Core cities Kagoshima Ōita Nagasaki Miyazaki Naha Kurume Parts of Kyushu have a climate, particularly Miyazaki. Major agricultural products are rice, tea, tobacco, sweet potatoes, the island is noted for various types of porcelain, including Arita, Imari, Satsuma, and Karatsu. Heavy industry is concentrated in the north around Fukuoka, Kitakyushu, Nagasaki, and Oita and includes chemicals, automobiles, semiconductors, in 2010, the graduate employment rate in the region was the lowest nationwide, at 88. 9%. Besides the volcanic area of the south, there are significant mud hot springs in the part of the island, around Beppu. These springs are the site of occurrence of certain extremophile micro-organisms, the Kanmon Bridge also connects the island with Honshu. Railways on the island are operated by the Kyushu Railway Company, and Nishitetsu Railway
5.
Prefectures of Japan
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The Prefectures of Japan consist of 47 prefectures. They form the first level of jurisdiction and administrative division of Japan and they consist of 43 prefectures proper, two urban prefectures, one circuit or territory and one metropolis. The Meiji Fuhanken sanchisei administration created the first prefectures to replace the provinces of Japan in 1868, each prefectures chief executive is a directly-elected governor. Ordinances and budgets are enacted by an assembly whose members are elected for four-year terms. Under the current Local Autonomy Law, each prefecture is subdivided into cities and districts and each district into towns, for example, Hokkaido has 14 subprefectures that act as branch offices of the prefecture. Some other prefectures also have offices that carry out prefectural administrative functions outside the capital. Tokyo, the capital of Japan, is a merged city-prefecture, the Wests use of prefecture to label these Japanese regions stems from 16th-century Portuguese explorers and traders use of prefeitura to describe the fiefdoms they encountered there. Its original sense in Portuguese, however, was closer to municipality than province and those fiefs were headed by a local warlord or family. Though the fiefs have long since been dismantled, merged, and reorganized multiple times, and been granted legislative governance and oversight, the Meiji government established the current system in July 1871 with the abolition of the Han system and establishment of the prefecture system. Although there were initially over 300 prefectures, many of them being former Han territories, this number was reduced to 72 in the part of 1871. The Local Autonomy Law of 1947 gave more power to prefectures. In 2003, then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi proposed that the government consolidate the current prefectures into about 10 regional states, the plan called for each region to have greater autonomy than existing prefectures. This process would reduce the number of administrative regions and cut administrative costs. As of August 2012, no reorganization has been scheduled, the central government delegates many functions to the prefectures and municipalities, but retains the overall right to control them. Although local government expenditure accounts for 70 percent of government expenditure, the central government controls local budgets, tax rates. Historically, during the Edo period, the Tokugawa shogunate established bugyō-ruled zones around the nine largest cities in Japan, and 302 township-ruled zones elsewhere. When the Meiji government began to create the system in 1868, the nine bugyō-ruled zones became fu, while the township-ruled zones. Later, in 1871, the government designated Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto as fu, during World War II, in 1943, Tokyo became a to, a new type of pseudo-prefecture
6.
Districts of Japan
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As of 2008, cities belong directly to prefectures and are independent from districts. In Japan, towns and villages belong to districts and the districts possess little to no administrative authority, the districts are used primarily in the Japanese addressing system and to identify the relevant geographical areas and collections of nearby towns and villages. The district was initially called kōri and has ancient roots in Japan, although the Nihon Shoki says they were established during the Taika Reforms, kōri was originally written 評. It was not until the Taihō Code that kōri came to be written 郡, under the Taihō Code, the administrative unit of province was above district, and the village was below. Each jurisdiction refers to its position along the river from which the former province. Kamikawa means upper course of the river, Nakagawa means middle course, jacobs at Urban Studies Research, Vol.2011, doi,10. 1155/2011/692764 Graphic shows relationships among Japanese cities at p.7 of Large City System of Japan Text of the Local Government Law
7.
Michelia
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Michelia is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the Magnolia family. The genus includes about 50 species of trees and shrubs, native to tropical and subtropical south and southeast Asia. The Magnoliaceae are an ancient family, fossil plants identifiably belonging to the Magnoliaceae date back 95 million years, a primitive aspect of the Magnolia family is that their large, cup-shaped flowers lack distinct petals or sepals. The large non-specialized flower parts, resembling petals, are called tepals, the leaves, flowers, and form of Michelia resemble Magnolia, but the blossoms of Michelia generally form clusters among the leaves, rather than singly at the branch ends as Magnolia does. Several of the species are locally important sources of timber. Some species, including the Champak and M. doltsopa are grown for their flowers, Champak flowers are also used to produce an essential oil for perfume. A few species have been introduced to gardens or as street trees outside of the Indomalaya region, including Michelia figo, M. doltsopa, the genus is named after the Florentine botanist Pietro Antonio Micheli. Morphological data and molecular data showed that the genus Michelia is very closely related to subgenus Yulania of genus Magnolia. Many botanists now treat the genus Michelia accordingly, new combinations of names have been provided for. For further information see under genus Magnolia, wu Michelia cavaleriei Finet & Gagnep. Native to India, Java, and the Philippines, a tree or shrub which grows from 3 to 6 meters high and wide. Glossy bright green leaves to 16 cm, produces fragrant orange, yellow, or creamy white flowers in the spring. The flowers of this plant produce an oil that is used in perfume. Michelia chapensis Dandy Michelia compressa Sarg, Michelia coriacea Chang & Chen Michelia crassipes Y. -W. Large shrubs and trees, growing to 30 meters, native to the eastern Himalayas and Meghalaya subtropical forests. Varies in form from bushy to narrow and upright, leathery dark-green leaves,6 to 17 cm in length. Clusters of creamy white flowers in winter, growing in popularity as a street tree in coastal California. Wu Michelia elliptilimba Chen & Noot, a slow growing shrub or small tree that can grow up to 5 meters high and nearly as wide
8.
Wisteria
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Wisteria is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family, Fabaceae, that includes ten species of woody climbing bines native to the Eastern United States and to China, Korea, and Japan. Some species are popular ornamental plants, an aquatic flowering plant with the common name wisteria or water wisteria is in fact Hygrophila difformis, in the family Acanthaceae. The botanist Thomas Nuttall said he named the genus Wisteria in memory of Dr. Caspar Wistar, as the spelling is apparently deliberate, there is no justification for changing the genus name under the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. However, some spell the plants common name wistaria, and Fowler is decisively for the wistaria spelling, genetic analysis shows Callerya, Afgekia and Wisteria to be each others closest relatives and quite distinct from other members of the tribe Millettieae. The following is a list of accepted Wisteria species, Wisteria brachybotrys Siebold & Zucc, Wisteria brevidentata Rehder Wisteria floribunda DC. – Japanese wisteria Wisteria frutescens Poir, – American wisteria Wisteria macrostachya Nutt. – Kentucky wisteria Wisteria sinensis DC, – Chinese wisteria Wisteria venusta Rehder & Wils. – Silky wisteria Wisteria villosa Rehder Wisterias climb by twining their stems either clockwise or counterclockwise round any available support and they can climb as high as 20 m above the ground and spread out 10 m laterally. The worlds largest known wisteria is in Sierra Madre, California, measuring more than 1 acre in size, planted in 1894, it is of the Chinese lavender variety. The leaves are alternate,15 to 35 cm long, pinnate, the flowers are produced in pendulous racemes 10 to 80 cm long, similar to those of the genus Laburnum, but are purple, violet, pink or white. There is no yellow on the leaves, flowering is in spring in some Asian species, and in mid to late summer in the American species and W. japonica. The flowers of species are fragrant, most notably W. sinensis. Wisteria species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including brown-tail, the seeds are produced in pods similar to those of Laburnum, and, like the seeds of that genus, are poisonous. All parts of the plant contain a saponin called wisterin which is toxic if ingested and may cause dizziness, confusion, speech problems, nausea, vomiting, stomach pains, diarrhea and collapse. Wisterias have caused poisoning in children and pets of many countries, producing mild to severe gastroenteritis, Wisteria, especially Wisteria sinensis, is very hardy and fast-growing. It can grow in fairly poor-quality soils, but prefers fertile, moist and it can be propagated via hardwood cutting, softwood cuttings, or seed. However, specimens grown from seed can take decades to bloom, for this reason, another reason for failure to bloom can be excessive fertilizer. Wisteria has nitrogen fixing capability, and thus mature plants may benefit from added potassium and phosphate, finally, wisteria can be reluctant to bloom because it has not reached maturity
9.
Meadow bunting
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The meadow bunting or Siberian meadow bunting is a passerine bird of eastern Asia which belongs to the genus Emberiza in the bunting family Emberizidae. The meadow bunting is 15 to 16.5 cm long, the male is mostly rufous-brown with dark streaks on the back. The boldly-patterned head is brown with white eyebrows, moustachial stripe and throat, the outer tail-feathers are white and the legs are pinkish-brown. Females are similar but are duller and paler with a less well-defined head pattern, the song is a short, hurried phrase given from a prominent perch. The call is a series of up to four sharp notes and it breeds in southern Siberia, northern and eastern China, eastern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Korea and Japan. It is fairly non-migratory but northern birds move south as far as southern China, there are several records from Europe but many of these are considered to be escapes from captivity rather than genuine vagrants. It occurs in dry, open habitats such as scrub, farmland, grassland, the nest is built low in bushes or on the ground. Three to five eggs are laid and are incubated for 11 days, the young birds fledge after another 11 days. Pairs are monogamous and use the area for breeding several years in a row. Lewington, Ian, Alström, Per & Colston, Peter, a Field Guide to the Rare Birds of Britain and Europe. A Field Guide to the Birds of China
Takachiho travel guide from Wikivoyage
