It was centered on Aomori and Iwate prefectures on the northeast end of Honshu, Japan's main island.

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Despite a tunnel between Hokkaido and northern Honshu, Japan's main island, connections to the country's industrial heartland are poor.

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Oku-noto no Aenokoto is an agricultural ritual transmitted from generation to generation by the rice farmers of the Noto Peninsula, which projects from Ishikawa prefecture in the centre of Japan s main island, Honshu.

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It is the second of three big bridges planned in the early 1970s to link Japan's main island of Honshu to Shikoku.

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They have since been pushed into the Sea of Japan by a branch of the warm Kuroshio current that is running much closer to land than usual, and have spread up Japan's west coast and even through the Tsugaru strait between Japan's main island, Honshu, and northern Hokkaido into the Pacific Ocean.

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