• MidsizedSedan@lemmy.world
    4·
    10 hours ago

    Meeting a very think english accent in central UK is a 50/50 chance its actually Japanese. (Either it is or it isn’t)

  • Meron35@lemmy.world
    401·
    21 hours ago

    That’s entire fucking Kanto Region (32,000km2), which is even larger than the Kanto basin (17,000km2), not the Greater Tokyo Area (13,500km2).

    Most of the Greater Tokyo Area is farmland already. The Kanto Region is a further agglomeration of seven prefectures.

    A better comparison with the UK would be Greater Tokyo Area (13,5000km2) Vs London Metropolitan Area (9000km2, mostly limited by its greenbelt).

    If you insist on comparing Regions, then the Kanto Region should be compared with London + East of England + South East, for a total of around 50,000km2 (UK keeps London as it’s own region).

      • Meron35@lemmy.world
        11·
        10 hours ago

        Also not as disparate as memes would have you believe, depending on how you look at it.

        The Tokyo Metro Area is very dense at 38 million / 13,000km2, compared to the London Metro Area’s 15 million / 9000km2. But the density of Tokyo rapidly decreases as you go further out, even with the Metro Area.

        Even agglomerating up to the entire Kanto Region only gets around 42 million / 32,000km2. London + East + South East Regions gets you 31 million / 50,000km2.

        I don’t think comparing comparing Regions is very useful, but this only yields that Kanto is approximately twice as dense as London + surroundings. National level figures have Japan at 330/km2, Vs UK’s 285/km2.

        A much more suitable comparison would be the central areas of Tokyo and London, which are the 9 special wards in/around the Yamanote Loop and Inner London (roughly zone 2). This is around 2.2mil / 140km2 or around 15,000/km2 for Tokyo Vs 3.4mil / 320km2 or around 11,000/km2 for London. Again, not nearly the massive discrepancy suggested by memes.

        Apologies if my tone is pointed - having lived and commuted in both cities the way the internet thinks of Japan really bothers me. I do think Tokyo is worse for crowdedness, but honestly not by much, especially when London tube lines can be so long they go outside the station.

        If you repeat the exercise and focus only on central areas, you will find that most major cities actually have very similar densities.

        • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
          1·
          8 hours ago

          the way the internet thinks of Japan really bothers me

          At least it seems like we’ve (mostly) moved into a post “Japan so wacky! Look at their panty vending machines, and also craaaaazy TV shows!” phase these days. It’s still misrepresented in a lot of ways, but long gone are the days when you could just post a pic of a bottle of Pocari Sweat and have everyone lose their shit

  • aeronmelon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    781·
    1 day ago

    Also, that’s an outline of the entire Kanto basin, not simply Tokyo. It looks like Tokyo, Chiba, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tochigi, Gunma, and Kanagawa prefectures.

    “Greater Tokyo area” - most of that is farmland and forests.

  • BigDaddySlim@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    1 day ago

    Fascinating, but untrue. That’s not England, that’s the large garbage island floating in our oceans. Common mistake.

  • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
    12·
    1 day ago

    Meh, they seem to have gone beyond even the outer ring road. But I don’t think it really needed that to be much larger than London.

    I reckon Wuhan is more impressive, with the third ring road clearly visible from the maps and about 50km wide.
    Shit there is even a further ring road that’s almost 150km wide, but as others have said with OP’s, the area is mostly fields so calling it Greater Wuhan would be really stretching it.
    And Wuhan isn’t even considered a mega city, in China! (it’s just the one I know, that’s why I mention it)

    • jqubed@lemmy.world
      5·
      1 day ago

      Maybe we need something that will let us overlay population density maps, not just geographic boundaries

      • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        13 hours ago

        I think just looking at the road network gives you fairly nice, clearly delineated areas.
        Paris has got this concept of intra-muros (within the walls) and extra-muros and the limit of this area is the ring road around it. And if you look at your favourite map software you can see the 10km wide circle clear as day. Then one other ring further out (about 20km wide), then a third about 40km wide, a bit more patchy, the circle isn’t perfect or complete, but still the area is clear enough.

        I believe you can see this growth ring structure too, if you look at London and probably a lot of other historic cities.

      • Stamets@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
        2·
        22 hours ago

        Pretty sure the entire point of the original thing was specifically to see those geographic boundaries though

        • jqubed@lemmy.world
          4·
          21 hours ago

          But if part of this is sparsely-populated farmland, being able to compare population density might give us a better picture of where the people really are. It wouldn’t necessarily help us visually compare population, since London doesn’t seem to have a lot of high rise residential buildings, but maybe give a better idea of the sprawl.