Distances in Japan (Getting Familiar with Metric Length Conversion)

If you're thinking about spending a year in Japan teaching English, you'll need to be prepared for many changes - including a new system of length conversion. If you're not ready to get familiar with metric conversion length, you'll find yourself lost in short order.

Japanese Measurements

Before1924, Japan had been using the old-style shakkan-ho system for over 1300 years. The Japanese government officially adopted the metric system at that time, and outlawed the old system for legal purposes in 1966. Because of the relative intricacies of the shakkan-ho system, which is not at all consistent (the base unit, the shaku, is the length between a person's thumb and middle finger), length conversion was difficult and any serviceable length conversion table would have been complicated. If Japan were to successfully function in the worldwide trade community, metric length conversion was necessary (interestingly, Japanese carpenters and farmers still use the old-fashioned shakkan-ho system).

The Metric Way

The good news is that length conversion using the metric system is easy! If you can count, add, subtract, divide and multiply be tens, you'll be right at home with the metric conversion of units length, even if you are among the mathematically challenged.

Once you have access to a metric length conversion chart, you'll be able to know exactly how far you need to go, wherever you go among the islands of Japan.

Don't think it's important to know the metric system? After all, we don't bother with length conversion to metrics in the USA, do we? (The only other two nations on earth that reject the metric system are Myanmar [Burma] and Liberia.)
In fact, metric length conversion is more important than people think. When Canada first switched to the metric system in the early 1980s, an Air Canada Boeing 767 ran out of fuel in mid-flight because two people didn't know the metric system; in 1999, NASA lost a $125 million Mars probe because the scientists were working in two different measurement systems.

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