Japan vs United States

United States is 26 times larger than Japan — 9,833,517 against 377,915 km². United States is 2.8 times more populous than Japan — 341,784,857 against 123,366,734 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 9.4 times more densely populated than United States — 326 against 35 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, United States on the right.
• Different currencies: the Japanese yen and the United States dollar.
• United States spans 6 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• 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.

United States

Third or fourth largest country in the world depending on how China's area is counted. It spans six standard time zones across the fifty states, from UTC-10 in Hawaii to UTC-5 on the east coast. Death Valley holds the highest reliably recorded air temperature on Earth, 56.7 °C in 1913, and is 86 m below sea level; Denali, 5,500 km away in Alaska, is 6,190 m.

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.