From the NationMaster website, I found a long list of interesting statistics comparing Japan and America (any countries can be compared on that website…but since I was born in America and have been living in Japan for more than half of my life, I decided to compare those two countries.)
According to that website:
– America has three times as much crime as Japan,
– America has the world’s highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Japan has the third (was the second highest until China surpassed Japan recently),
– American school classrooms have an average of 18 students per class, and Japan has an average of 35.
– 30% of Americans are considered obese but only 3.2% of Japanese are.
– Japan has a 99% literacy rate, America’s is 86%
– America drinks 10 times as many soft drinks as Japan…but Japan drinks 71% more alcohol than America.
Tokyo Five 
The strongest drink I have is cherry soda 🙂 I always tell that joke online to people. But I don’t drink any alcohol ever.
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Why don’t you drink?
I like alcohol a lot … especially beer!
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By the way, I looked at your blog.
You know Japanese hiragana characters, don’t you?
Do you know katakana and kanji, too?
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Thanks for posting this website, as it is very informative for comparing countries.
When I was in America, my friends and I would drink, but we usually reserved it for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Here in Japan, I find that people do not limit their drinking to certain days of the week.
I actually had this discussion with a Japanese girl that I met in Roppongi last night, and I believe that modes of transportation have a slight impact on the drinking culture in both countries.
In America, where most drive their own vehicles to and from work, I believe that it limits their ability to join friends for a night of drinking.
In Japan, the efficiency and ease of taking trains allows many people to go drinking after work on a regular basis.
I could be wrong, but it is just my thought 🙂
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That might have something to do with it.
I have been in Japan for most of my life now, and I’ve only been to the U.S. for a visit four times … so I’m not really used to America anymore.
I was surprised, the last time I visited, about all rules and stigma that America seems to have for drinking. Alcohol can’t be purchased after midnight and drinking isn’t permitted outdoors there.
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Wow… the alcohol statistic is a big surprise! I’m not a fan of how people are judged by their weight in society… it seems as if you have to be a walking skeleton nowadays, in order to “not” be considered obese!
I’ll make a comparison: Japan and the U.S. are… BUDDIES! \m/\m/ Whoa!
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Yeah … alcohol is popular here! I was surprised by that statistic too! Do many Americans not drink? I drink beer with dinner everyday.
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Average total years of students in school including higher education.
14.3 – Japan; 15.2 U.S.
Citizens in the U.S. are generally 70% more happy than in Japan by lifestyle stats.
Suicide rate of females in Japan is 2x higher than U.S.
Gasoline prices are 126% more in Japan than U.S. but the CO2 emissions for U.S. are 4x more than Japan. A correlation maybe? Or perhaps more people need to drive in the U.S. due to lack of public transportation from the sheer size of the U.S.
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About the percentage of “happy” people, I think that’s difficult to measure.
A Japanese person who is just as “happy” as an American would probably be less likely to classify himself as such on a survey than the American person … due to a difference in culture.
Japan does have a higher suicide rate than many other industrialized countries … that’s unfortunate.
But the crime rate is very low!
Gasoline prices are very high here compared to America … but I’ve heard that they’re lower than in England, for example.
(And I heard that, though Americans consider Japan to be a geographically small country, the English consider it big (relatively).)
Having a car may be expensive in Tokyo but it just makes the clean, safe, affordable, and punctual public transportation system here all the more appealing.
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