Egypt vs Japan

Egypt is 2.6 times larger than Japan — 1,001,450 against 377,915 km². Japan is slightly more populous, by 4.2% — 123,366,734 against 118,365,995 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 2.8 times more densely populated than Egypt — 326 against 118 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 — Egypt on the right, Japan on the left.
• Different currencies: the Egyptian pound and the Japanese yen.
• Different continents — Africa and Asia.

Egypt

Almost the entire population lives on the Nile valley and delta, which is only a few percent of the country's land area; the rest is desert. The Nile runs about 6,650 km from its headwaters to the Mediterranean. The Suez Canal, 193 km long, has no locks because the Mediterranean and Red Sea are close to the same level.

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.