The one page reading discusses the four main islands, the archipelago, arable land vs mountains, Shintoism, the Ring of Fire, the 2011 tsunami, selective borrowing and cherry blossoms. It is a good read to cover a lot in a little and it has 5 questions for the students to answer. It also has vocabulary words for the students to define from the reading. There is a matching map assignment that was created for distance learning as all the students have to do is match the item, like the Pacific O