About Japanese administrative divisions

I'd like to talk about my traveling experiences in Japan by listing the administrative divisions in this series of posts.

There are one "to", Tokyo-to; one "do", Hokkai-do; two "fu", Osaka-fu and Kyoto-fu; and 43 "ken". All of these are on a state or provincial level, however, Hokkai-do is much larger than the others in square.　And except Hokkai-do, the other prefectures are divided to several regions:


Hokkaidō

1. Hokkaidō

Tōhoku

2. Aomori (haven't been to)

3. Iwate

4. Miyagi

5. Akita (haven't been to)

6. Yamagata

7. Fukushima

Kantō

8. Ibaraki

9. Tochigi

10. Gunma (haven't been to)

11. Saitama

12. Chiba

13. Tōkyō

14. Kanagawa

Chūbu

15. Niigata (haven't been to)

16. Toyama (haven't been to)

17. Ishikawa

18. Fukui (haven't been to)

19. Yamanashi

20. Nagano

21. Gifu

22. Shizuoka

23. Aichi

Kansai

24. Mie

25. Shiga

26. Kyōto

27. Ōsaka

28. Hyōgo

29. Nara

30. Wakayama (haven't been to)

Chūgoku

31. Tottori

32. Shimane

33. Okayama

34. Hiroshima

35. Yamaguchi

Shikoku

36. Tokushima

37. Kagawa

38. Ehime

39. Kōchi (haven't been to)

Kyūshū

40. Fukuoka

41. Saga (haven't been to)

42. Nagasaki

43. Kumamoto (haven't been to)

44. Ōita

45. Miyazaki

46. Kagoshima

Okinawa

47. Okinawa

Hokkai- do and Okinawa-ken are special, because they became a part of Japanese territory later than other prefectures.