For the last 35 years, Japan has thought that its territory includes 6,852 islands. Turns out, the number is actually 14,125. The happy news comes from Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI) who used new technology to find the 7,000+ additional islands. From CNN:
It said that while there is no international agreement on how to count islands, it had used the same size criterion as the previous survey 35 years ago.
That entailed counting all naturally occurring land areas with a circumference of at least 100 meters (330 feet).
The new number does not include any artificially reclaimed land.
