Greece vs Japan

Japan is 2.9 times larger than Greece — 377,915 against 131,957 km². Japan is 12 times more populous than Greece — 123,366,734 against 10,413,962 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 4.1 times more densely populated than Greece — 326 against 79 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 — Greece on the right, Japan on the left.
• Different currencies: the Euro and the Japanese yen.
• Different continents — Europe and Asia.

Greece

Somewhere between 1,200 and 6,000 islands depending on how you count a rock, of which about 227 are inhabited. Greece has roughly 13,700 km of coastline, the longest in the Mediterranean and eleventh longest in the world. No part of the mainland is more than about 137 km from the sea, and Mount Olympus reaches 2,917 m.

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.