Japanese Chips Grabber

The highest estimates suggest that 84–96 percent of the Japanese population are Buddhists or Shintoists, including a large number of believers in a syncretism of both religions. However, these estimates are based on people associated with a temple, rather than the number of people truly following the religion. Professor Robert Kisala (Nanzan University) suggests that only 30 percent of the population identify themselves as belonging to a religion. Taoism and Confucianism from China have also influenced Japanese beliefs and customs. Religion in Japan tends to be syncretic in nature, resulting in a variety of practices, such as parents and children celebrating Shinto rituals, students praying before exams, couples holding a wedding at a Christian church, and funerals being held at Buddhist temples. According to the CIA World Fact Book, two percent of Japanese are Christian (2.4 million). In addition, since the mid-19th century, numerous religious sects (Shinshūkyō) have emerged in Japan.
Languages
More than 99 percent of the population speaks Japanese as their first language. It is an agglutinative language distinguished by a system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary indicating the relative status of speaker and listener. Japanese writing uses kanji (Chinese characters) and two sets of kana (syllabaries based on simplified Chinese characters), as well as the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals.