Ethiopia vs Japan

Ethiopia is 2.9 times larger than Japan — 1,104,300 against 377,915 km². Ethiopia is slightly more populous, by 9.8% — 135,472,051 against 123,366,734 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 2.7 times more densely populated than Ethiopia — 326 against 123 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 — Ethiopia on the right, Japan on the left.
• Different currencies: the Ethiopian birr and the Japanese yen.
• Different continents — Africa and Asia.

Ethiopia

Ethiopia has the highest mean elevation of any country in Africa, with more land above 3,000 m than the rest of the continent combined. The Blue Nile leaves Lake Tana here and supplies most of the Nile's flow during the flood season. The country keeps its own calendar of thirteen months, running seven to eight years behind the Gregorian one.

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.