Japan (Japanese: 日本 Nippon [nip̚põ̞ɴ] or Nihon [nihõ̞ɴ] is an East Asian archipelago-nation comprised of 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, the East China Sea, China, Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", and it is often called the "Land of the Rising Sun."