During a trip to Europe last summer, my family and I had the opportunity to visit Glasgow, Scotland's largest city. While there, I discovered that the city was not "twinned," as it is called in the United Kingdom, with Japan, although it did have sister city relations with Dalian, China, and cities in a number of other countries. Upon further research, I learned that Edinburgh, Scotland's capital, also did not have a sister city in Japan.
I began to wonder what other important cities in the world lacked a connection with Japan, and upon returning to Japan, where I have lived for 29 years, I started looking into what places Japan currently possessed sister city or other types of relations with.
Japan has 1,751 "sister city" (including at the prefecture, city, ward, town and village levels) relationships, as of June 1. As there are 1,728 local authorities in Japan, it appears that just about every municipality is twinned.