what makes japan a group of islands?
Japan is an archipelago of thousands of islands, though most of the nation's people live on a few of the largest ones. Japan is well known for volcanic activity and earthquakes, and it is perched on the Ring of Fire, a fringe of coastline that surrounds much of the Pacific Ocean.
The volcanoes that built Japan's newest island last erupted in the mid-1970s, along the Izu-Ogasawara-Mariana Trench. Follow Brian Clark Howard on Twitter and Google+. Japan got just a little bit bigger this week, as a volcano created abrand new island about 600 miles (970 kilometers) south of Tokyo. The island is about 660 feet (200 meters) in diameter, according to the Japanese coast guard. It sits off the coast of Nishinoshima, itself a small, uninhabited island in a group of about 30 islands known as the Bonin Islands, or the Ogasawara chain.