Interesting map facts about Australia and Japan

I love maps and interesting statistics. This article has some fascinating statistics that relate to

our lives as Aussies in Japan. Here are the ones that catch my eye most:

• Japan's a pretty green place, especially in comparison to Australia. Japan has 68.6% of its land forested, that's 17th highest in the world.
• Japan has many more roads than Australia (1.21 million km vs 823,000 km), despite Australia being 20 times bigger than Japan. I guess it makes sense in some ways, because Japan has more than five and a half times Australia's population.
• We've moved from one of the least crowded nations to one of the most crowded (well, we pretty much knew this already!).
• Australian drink more alcohol than Japanese, in fact more than most countries do. I don't know if I'm surprised at this. I do know that alcohol is readily available in my local grocery store in Japan, though.
• Japan is one of the highest risk nations for a natural disaster. Yep, pretty sure I knew this. That's why we have an emergency kit in our cupboard.
• Australia and Japan are both listed on the high end of urbanisation. Difference is that there's a lot of places where no one lives in Australia. Driving through Japanese and Australian countryside is quite a different experience. The cities and towns are much further apart in Australia.



One of the hundreds of tunnels in Japan, this one is on
the northern island on Hokkaido.

• The two countries are similar in ranking for rail network, but I'm sure that that is totally skewed by the long distances trains have to cover to get to Perth and Darwin. Rail is the primary mode of transport in Tokyo. 40 million passengers use the trains each day! More than Australia's whole population. Tokyo alone has 882 stations and nearly 5,000 km of track!

Our house (blue roof) and road.

Go and have a peek at the maps, you might learn something about your country you don't know!