Costa Rica vs Japan

Japan is 7.4 times larger than Costa Rica — 377,915 against 51,100 km². Japan is 24 times more populous than Costa Rica — 123,366,734 against 5,152,950 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 3.2 times more densely populated than Costa Rica — 326 against 101 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 — Costa Rica on the right, Japan on the left.
• Different currencies: the Costa Rican colón and the Japanese yen.
• Different continents — North America and Asia.

Costa Rica

Costa Rica covers about 0.03 percent of the Earth's surface but holds roughly five percent of its known species. More than a quarter of the country is protected, forest cover has roughly doubled since the 1980s, and it runs on close to 100 percent renewable electricity most years. It has around sixty volcanoes, six of them active.

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.