Japan vs Puerto Rico

Japan is 42 times larger than Puerto Rico — 377,915 against 9,104 km². Japan is 39 times more populous than Puerto Rico — 123,366,734 against 3,184,835 people.

Side by side

Population density

Puerto Rico is slightly more densely populated, by 7.2% — 350 against 326 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 — Japan on the left, Puerto Rico on the right.
• Different currencies: the Japanese yen and the United States dollar.
• Different continents — Asia and North America.

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.

Puerto Rico

The Puerto Rico Trench off the north coast reaches about 8,400 m, the deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean. El Yunque is the only tropical rainforest in the United States National Forest system. Mosquito Bay on Vieques is the brightest bioluminescent bay in the world, lit by dinoflagellates in the water.

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.