Algeria vs Japan

Algeria is 6.3 times larger than Japan — 2,381,740 against 377,915 km². Japan is 2.6 times more populous than Algeria — 123,366,734 against 47,435,312 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 16 times more densely populated than Algeria — 326 against 20 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• They drive on opposite sides — Algeria on the right, Japan on the left.
• Different currencies: the Algerian dinar and the Japanese yen.
• Different continents — Africa and Asia.

Algeria

The largest country in Africa, and the tenth largest in the world. About four-fifths of it is Sahara, so nearly the whole population lives on the Mediterranean strip in the north. The Hoggar mountains in the deep south rise above 2,900 m and get frost.

Japan

A 2023 government survey using digital mapping counted 14,125 islands, more than double the long-quoted figure of 6,852. About three-quarters of the land is mountain, so nearly everyone lives on a narrow band of coastal plain. Japan sits where four tectonic plates meet and records a fifth of the world's magnitude-6-and-above earthquakes.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.