Greenland vs Japan

Greenland is 5.7 times larger than Japan — 2,166,086 against 377,915 km². Japan is 2171 times more populous than Greenland — 123,366,734 against 56,831 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 12442 times more densely populated than Greenland — 326 against 0 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 — Greenland on the right, Japan on the left.
• Different currencies: the krone and the Japanese yen.
• Greenland spans 3 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — North America and Asia.

Greenland

The largest island in the world, and about eighty percent of it is under an ice sheet up to 3 km thick — enough water to raise global sea level roughly 7 m if it all melted. There are no roads between towns; travel is by boat, plane or snow. Its population of under 60,000 lives almost entirely on the ice-free coastal fringe.

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.