Literacy rate in Japan!

It's close to one hundred percent - perhaps the highest literacy rate in the world. And Japanese do read a lot. They have one of the world's highest ratios of newspaper circulation to population. And they have the world's largest number and variety of weekly and monthly magazines. Also, Japan ranks fourth in the world in the number of books published each year.

All this reading take place almost everywhere. People read at home, of course. And expecially while waiting in line or getting from one place to another. The commuter trains are filled with people reading newspapers books, and magazines.

There are a lot of bookstores in Japan, especially in the cities. There are secondhand books available too. Japanese are avid book buyers. And there's probably more browsing in book stores in Japan than anywhere else in the world.