Japan vs Venezuela

Venezuela is 2.4 times larger than Japan — 912,050 against 377,915 km². Japan is 4.3 times more populous than Venezuela — 123,366,734 against 28,516,896 people.

Side by side

Population density

Japan is 10 times more densely populated than Venezuela — 326 against 31 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, Venezuela on the right.
• Different currencies: the Japanese yen and the Venezuelan bolívar soberano.
• Different continents — Asia and South 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.

Venezuela

Angel Falls drops 979 m from the top of Auyán-tepui, the highest uninterrupted waterfall in the world — so high that in the dry season much of the water turns to mist before it lands. The tepuis are flat-topped sandstone table mountains, each an island of species cut off for millions of years. Lake Maracaibo sees more lightning than anywhere else on Earth, around 250 strikes per km² a year.

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.