Japan Numbers Trivia- Student A
Turn the sentences below into questions (e.g. “How many…?”) and give your partner hints (“It’s much more” “It’s quite a lot less” etc) until they get exactly the right answer.
The longest tapeworm in Meguro Parasitological museum is 8.8 meters long.
55% of the Japanese coastline is covered in concrete
More than 140,000 people were killed in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. More than half a million homes were destroyed.
The most southerly point of Tokyo is Okinotori Island. It is 1,740 km from Shinjuku
There are 21,000 ramen restaurants in Greater Tokyo
There are 80,000 restaurants in Tokyo (compared with 15000 in New York and 6000 in London)
The food hall of Tobu department store in Ikebukuro has 243 different vendors (it is Tokyo’s largest).
There are 532 MacDonald’s restaurants in Tokyo.
There are 60 exits from Shinjuku station
Every day 3.2 million people pass through Shinjuku station. (This is more than the total population of Panama).
Approx. 250,000 people cross Shibuya pedestrian crossing every Saturday.
Two out of three (= 66% of) Tokyo women have been groped on a train.
In a survey, 99% of Japanese workers said they if they knew their company was doing something illegal they wouldn’t tell anyone.
Tokyo consumers come into contact with up to 3,000 advertisements everyday
33% of high school students in Japan think school is fun. (The average of the 40 countries in the survey was 53%)
The average age at which a Tokyo woman has her first child is 30. (This is five years older than the U.S. average.)
40.7% of Japanese men go to university. Only 22.9% of Japanese women do so.
Two thirds of all students aged 12 to 15 attend “juku” (cram school).
One third of 12 year olds go to bed at midnight or later
The population of Greater Tokyo (the area within 50 kilometres of central Tokyo) was 34,122,771 on the 1st of January 2005
The heaviest ever sumo wrestler was the Hawaiian-born Konishiki. He weighed 267 kg (twice the weight of the present top sumo wrestler, yokozuna Asashoryu)
Over 5000 people were injured in the sarin nerve gas attacks in the Tokyo underground by the Aum Shinrikyo cult, and 12 people were killed.
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Japan Numbers Trivia- Student B
Turn the sentences below into questions (e.g. “How many…?”) and give your partner hints (“It’s much more” “It’s quite a lot less” etc) until they get exactly the right answer.
The oldest man in the world ever lived in one of the southern islands that form part of Tokyo. He was 120 years and 237 days old when he died in 1986.
There are approximately 1.9 million foreign citizens in Japan. 30% are Koreans, 25% are Chinese, 15% Brazilian, 10% Filipino, 3% Peruvian, 2.5% Americans, 2% Thais, and 1% each for Indonesians, Vietnamese and British people.
12,000 Koreans live in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo. 12 Brazilians live in Chiyoda-ku.
In 1997, Japan had 3,449 museums
Hello Kitty weighs the same as three apples
Sanrio (creator of Hello Kitty) now has 50 different characters and makes 1 billion dollars a year
There were 16million visitors to Tokyo Disneyland in the year 2000 (It is the most popular theme park in the world).
The newspaper with the highest daily circulation in the world is the Yomiuri Shimbun. In January 2002 it sold 14,323,781 copies a day.
3 million people visit Meiji Jingu shrine in Tokyo during the “hatsumode” New Year shrine visit season. (There are so many people that traffic lights are used to control them.)
The LDP ruled Japan for 38 unbroken years
In the famous “Recruit scandal” 150 important people such as politicians were found to have been accepting bribes from the Recruit company.
The longest civil court case in the world ever took place in Japan when a history professor sued the Ministry of Education over changes to one of his textbooks. The case lasted 32 years
.The US military uses 10.4% of the land area of Okinawa prefecture and 19% of the main island. There are in 37 facilities in total.
In 1953, a strike at Nissan lasted 6 months
Customers had to take their shoes off to enter Mitsukoshi department store until 1923.
The Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate, Japan’s biggest yakuza group, has 900 gangsters working from 55 offices in Tokyo.
There are around 1250 koban police boxes in Tokyo.
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Japan Numbers Trivia- Student C
Turn the sentences below into questions (e.g. “How many…?”) and give your partner hints (“It’s much more” “It’s quite a lot less” etc) until they get exactly the right answer.
In 2003, 2.5 billion yen (10 million pounds) in cash was handed into the Tokyo police. 72% was returned to its owners.
There are said to be at least 30 different criminal gangs working in the Kabukicho area of Shinjuku, Tokyo.
The world’s first Japanese language word processor, made by Toshiba, cost 6.3 million yen (about 30,000 pounds).
There are 80 hot spring onsen in Tokyo.
In 2004, there were 66 earthquakes in Tokyo.
According to researchers, the probability of a magnitude 7 earthquake hitting Tokyo in the next 30 years is 70%.
More than 1000 new types of canned and bottled drinks are launched in Tokyo every year.
There are 400,000 vending machines in Tokyo.
One cherry blossom tree has more than 500,000 petals.
There are 39,000 love hotels in Japan. (There are only 33,000 convenience stores).
There are 500 million visits to love hotels a year, equivalent to 1.48 million a day.
There are 1,519 train stations in Greater Tokyo.
JR (Japan Railways) East is the busiest railway in the world. It carries 16.2 million passengers a day.
Over a 45 year career, a commuter in the Chiyoda ward of Tokyo spends 2.9 years travelling to and from work.
Foreign residents make up 1% of the population of Japan.
About 12 million Japanese people owe money to illegal loan sharks.
Japanese women have the highest life expectancy in the world. They live for 85.1 years and their life expectancy will increase to 92.5 years by the year 2045.
The Tokyo police receive more than 300,000 umbrellas a year. On a rainy day, they receive about 3,000 a day.
At least 24 people in Tokyo have fractured their skulls while bowing.
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PDF for easy saving and printing: Best of Japan trivia numbers
Related pages
Japanese learners of English page
Numbers pairwork guessing game (TEFLtastic classics Part 9)
46 trivia quizzes for EFL students (TEFLtastic Classics Part 44)
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