Colombia vs Japan

Colombia is 3.0 times larger than Japan — 1,138,910 against 377,915 km². Japan is 2.3 times more populous than Colombia — 123,366,734 against 53,425,635 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 7.0 times more densely populated than Colombia — 326 against 47 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 — Colombia on the right, Japan on the left.
• Different currencies: the Colombian peso and the Japanese yen.
• Different continents — South America and Asia.

Colombia

The only South American country with coastline on both the Pacific and the Caribbean. It has more bird species than any other country, around 1,900, and more orchid species too. The Andes split into three separate ranges here, and the Chocó on the Pacific side is among the wettest places on Earth, with over 10 m of rain a year in places.

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.