My geography is rubbish, I thought Japan was off the coast of China

[BlackAmericanoNoSugar]

I knew where Japan and Korea were in relation to each other with reasonably accuracy, but it turns out that the bit of coast that runs north from North Korea is not China after all, it's Russia. Which makes Vladivostock about 15 degrees further south than I thought it was, roughly level with Marseille when I had thought it was level with Stockholm. And also the northern tip of Japan is only 50km from a Russian island.

My Mum is going on a cruise to East Russia (flying into Seoul, then flying up to somewhere that I can't remember the name of and cruising down the east coast of Sakhalin island and then down the west coast of Japan and flying out of Sapporo) which is why I was looking at the map in the first place.

For some reason I had always though that Vladivostock was freezing and nearly arctic and that the border with China was much further north than it actually is.

You're not the only one, I totally agree with your last paragraph!

Me too! I thought only a teeny strip of Russia reached towards Alaska and all the rest was China. Gosh.

Vladivostock IS bloody freezing in winter! But its not like Siberia or worse, Sakha freezing.

I suppose it must be an east coast thing, in the same way as New York and Boston are much colder in the winter than London even though they are considerably further south because of weather approaching across a land mass and the ocean current coming from the north. The ocean currents probably aren't as favourable to east Russia as they are to western Europe..

To be fair, I think a lot of people forget that North Korea has a small border with Russia. There are some North Koreans working in Vladivostok in terrible conditions.

Well it is only 11 miles long and only accessible over a bridge.

Oh dear. You don’t even want to know where I thought North/South Korea were, but I’ll tell you anyway. Having just perused Google maps, I have discovered that what I thought was North/South Korea is actually a much smaller area of China (Hainan?). I too thought Japan was off China.

Oops. And on further inspection, it turns out that Hainan is an island so clearly not either Korea.

Don't worry, I thought that's where Japan was too, and I'm going there in 2 weeks! (I did fail Geography O'Level, so maybe that's why)

To be fair, Japan extends pretty far south. So, the southern parts of Japan, like Kyushu and Okinawa, are off the coast of China.

There is a long-standing dispute between Japan and Russia over the Kuril Islands.

Yes, there is clear sea between the south bit of Japan and China, so it's a bit like the UK being off the coast of Norway, about the same distance I think, it's just not the closest country.