Tokyo is the capital of Japan and the world's most populous metropolitan area. Kyoto was the imperial capital for over 1,000 years before Tokyo. Osaka is Japan's second-largest city and commercial hub.
A country's capital is far more than simply the city where its parliament meets or its president works. A capital is the symbolic heart of a nation - the place where its history is concentrated, its identity is expressed, and its future is debated and decided. Capitals are often the sites of the nation's grandest monuments and most prestigious universities, its most celebrated museums and most important ceremonial occasions. They are, in a very real sense, the face that a country presents to the world and to itself. What makes the geography of world capitals particularly fascinating is how often they defy the assumptions that most people bring to them. It is natural to assume that a country's largest, wealthiest, or most famous city must also be its capital. But this assumption is wrong with surprising frequency. Australia's capital is not Sydney - that magnificent harbor city which most people around the world picture when they think of Australia - nor is it Melbourne, the cultured second city. Instead, it is Canberra, a planned city purpose-built as a compromise between two rival urban giants. Canada's capital is not Toronto, its financial powerhouse, nor Vancouver, its most glamorous Pacific city, but Ottawa - chosen partly for its geographic position near the Quebec-Ontario border. Brazil's capital is not Rio de Janeiro, famous for its carnival and its beaches, nor São Paulo, the economic colossus of South America, but Brasília - a modernist masterpiece of urban planning, carved out of the interior jungle in the late 1950s in a conscious act of national will. Perhaps most remarkably, South Africa does not have one capital - it has three, each serving a different constitutional function, reflecting the complex political compromises of a nation that emerged from one of history's most painful transitions to democracy. This quiz will challenge you to test and refine your knowledge of world capitals, from the most familiar to the most surprising. Do you know the capital of Turkey - a question that trips up more people than you might expect? Can you identify which African city serves as the Nigerian capital, and why that capital was moved in 1991? These questions are not merely exercises in geographical memorization - each answer opens a window onto the politics, history, and identity of a nation. Explore, discover, and be surprised.