Population/Stuff/Chicago

POPULATION, STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE AND YOU KNOW FROM YOU'RE FROM CHICAGO IF....

Here's something many of you may not know about me...and why would you - it's pretty boring but I am fascinated by population. There's not really much else to it other than I am curious how different places are populated - most notably, I've been curious about Japan's population versus the United States. For the most part, the city sizes in the United States and Japan are fairly similar...the US makes up their population with mid-size and smaller cities. Japan densely packs their bigger cities and the rest is fairly desolate...mainly because of mountains and other inhabitable lands.

Total Populations:
Japan - 127,433,484
US - 304,875,000

Cities with over 1 million people (# of cities, total population of those cities, avg size per city)
Japan - 12 cities - pop. 28,362,994 - 2,363,582 per city
US - 9 cities - pop. 23,497,856 - 2,610,872 per city

Himeji ranks #25 in city population in Japan at 535,756 which would fall between Las Vegas (28) and Portland (29) in the US. Boston is #25 in America with 559,034, so not much of a significant difference.

To show the drastic difference - Himeji's population accounts for 0.004% of Japan's total population. The same percentage in America would yield 1,129,500 people - just below Dallas and San Diego. Tokyo is Japan's largest city (8,717,529) and it's fairly similar to the US's largest city, New York (8,143,197). New York is just 2.67% of America's population - whereas Tokyo is 6.8% of Japan's.

Japan has 227 cities with populations over 100,000 - America has 239.

Meaningless information basically shows what everyone knows - Japanese mainly live in really, really packed cities but I like the data.

I think I want to visit the top 25 most populated cities in both countries, so for the US - New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston. LEFT TO VISIT: 3/25 San Antonio, Jacksonville, El Paso

And Japan - Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Kobe, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Kawasaki, Saitama, Hiroshima, Sendai, Kitakyushu, Chiba, Sakai, Niigata, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Sagamihara, Okayama, Kumamoto, Funabashi, Hachioji, Himeji. LEFT TO VISIT: 17/25 Yokohama, Nagoya, Sapporo, Kawasaki, Saitama, Hiroshima, Sendai, Kitakyushu, Chiba, Sakai, Niigata, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Sagamihara, Kumamoto, Funabashi, Hachioji

One of my favorite websites to gaze at is http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

Here are some I find hilarious and make me realize my whiteness - Facebook, statistics (see above), comparing people to Hitler, menus with no decimal places (Gobel!!!), Grammar, The Ivy League, New Balance Shoes, Music Piracy, San Francisco, Having gay friends, Musical comedy, bottles of water, Oscar parties, gentrification, study abroad, being the only white person around, Mos Def, Standing still at concerts, knowing what's best, bicycles, Japan, Sarah Silverman, living by the water, Whole Foods, Sushi, Indie music, Apple products, Arrested Development, 80s night, David Sedaris, Microbreweries, Traveling, Having black friends, Asian girls, Wes Anderson movies and my favorite, Assists.
You
Read that site if you haven't already - it's hilarious

Lastly, I saw a facebook page dedicated to the idea of "You Know You're From Chicago If..." It's a long list so I wanted to check it out. Here are the ones I found true and hilarious and then the list I didn't understand and disagree with:

Hilarious and true to me -
You say 'wanna go with?' when you mean 'do you want to come with me?' -- (didn't really know that was a Chicago thing)
You can name three or four extra taxes nobody else pays
You know why they call it "the Windy City"
You've never been to Springfield
You know a good gyros joint
You know when the last the Cubs won a pennant
The 'Living room' is called the 'front room'
You don't pronounce the 's' at the end of Illinois. You become irate at people who do.
You measure distance in minutes.
You refer to anything south of I-80 as 'Southern Illinois'
You refer to Lake Michigan as 'The Lake'
You know the phone number of Empire Carpet
You wear gym shoes, not sneakers
You are STILL a Bulls fan
You live two miles from work and it takes you two hours to drive there
You know Lincoln Towing is Satan incarnate
You've taken the Red Line past the point where white people get off and black people get on - and vice versa
You've cursed at a cyclist, pedestrian or in-line skater on the lakefront path
You know the significance of State and Madison
When you refer to LSD, you don't necessarily mean the drug
School can get cancelled due to both extreme heat AND cold
You still claim that the Sears Tower is the tallest skyscraper in the world
Peter. Francis, Geraci.
You would prefer if New York just kept Macy's

True but not really me-
You can use two or three Daleyisms in context
You can imitate the mayor's whine
You say Chicaaaago
You think going to a Bears game in single digit temps with a wind off the lake is fun
Da is a proper definite article
You expect corruption in local politics
You go to the Dells in the summer to get away from the other 20,000 people that followed you
You guard your shoveled parking space with an old chair and unusable broom
You can recite many of "The Blues Brothers" lines
You have two favorite football teams: The Bears and anyone who beats the Packers
You don't flinch when you pay the fifth toll on your 45-minute car ride

No Clue what these mean at all-
You know exactly how many cars are 'legally' allowed to turn left after the light turns red (it's more than zero???)
You faithfully attended Lil Louis parties at The Bismarck (who is Lil Louis and why does he have parties?)
Your favorite melody to hum is "bang, bang, bang - skeet, skeet, skeet" (I don't think they're referring to Lil Jon)
You GOT to have spaghetti at your barbecue (What!??!)
You think kicking it outside of White Castle's parking lot is the "Freak Nik"
You have a picture of Harold Washington in your kitchen, living room, family room or basement.
You have ever been to the Tiki Room lounge in Hyde Park
You pluralize grocery stores and retail chains: "I'm going to Jewels"; "I bought it at Targets"; "I couldn't find parking at Wal-Marts" (where does this come from??? I know no one that says this and I've met a number of stupid people - even they don't pluralize stores)