Japan

Japan stamps, available worldwide from Io Collezionista. With a population of around 127 million, Japan is among the ten most populous countries in the world, even allowing for the well known decline in birth rates affecting almost every advanced economy. The Tokyo metropolitan area, with more than 37 million people, tops the equivalent ranking by a wide margin over second place (Mumbai, around 26 million). The kanji, the character used in Japanese writing, chosen to represent the country's name can be translated as "origin of the sun", which is where the habit of calling it the "Land of the Rising Sun" originates.