Gas, Oil, Natural Resources

[Hatori]

Hello! Geez, my list of things to talk about has been getting dusty and too vague to describe...
Anyway, I did a bit of research about Japan's dependency of natural resources. I had this discussion with my dad a few weeks ago, and I finally decided to look it up for Japan's needs.
Being ignorant as I am, I thought hastefully that maybe Japan didn't need as many resources comparing to other countries. With my semi-minimal research, Japan is SECOND to America's leading oil imports.
I'm a little shocked, but after my usual "Thinking-Hard" sessions, it does make sense!
Anyway, from what I couldn't find, I was wondering if you have a car in Japan and how much does it cost to get a gallon or enough gas to fuel your car to the max.
Thanks for reading, and I also supplied some interesting links below.
If you have anything to add to this subject or discuss, please say something!

http://tinyurl.com/2aoyex
http://tinyurl.com/2kbbof
http://tinyurl.com/3ysw2h

[Mike Cash]

Regular gas is currently about 145 yen per liter. You do the math if you want it in dollars per gallon.

[katafei]

Is that 'gas' or petrol??
Probably the same thing....

Sounds very cheap to me!!
Over here petrol would be 205 yen, at least
And diesel would be 161 yen or more per liter.
*I checked one of the cheaper suppliers.

[tōkai devotee]

Gas or gasoline is what Americans and Japanese call petrol.
The price is about the same as it is here in Australia, give or take a few cents. It used to be so much more expensive in Japan than here.

[Yudan Taiteki]

According to Google that's $5.10/gallon. Gas in the US is hovering around $3.10 in Ohio right now so that's significantly more expensive.

My gut instinct would be that Americans drive more and farther than Japanese on average, but I don't know if that's actually true.

(When I first started driving, gas was 99 cents a gallon.)

[jenl]

I'm sure I saw something interesting on BBC News recently about Japan and food self-reliance. I can't find it, but I can find this:

http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~witarto/sab2001/pd_ohga.html

Key words/phrases in Japanese, according to alc, seem to be:
食料自給率 food self-sufficiency ratio (ie. what percentage of food consumed in Japan is from Japan).
食糧危機 food supply crisis
食料供給 food supply
(if you were wanting to google up something about this in Japanese)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/p ... html/1.stm
- aha, found the bbc reference.

[Ken Pro]

According to the CIA (I didn't do the research myself, but my tax dollars helped pay for it), Japan's major natural resource is fish.

[OitaFish]

Judging by the used cars I've looked at, I would say that the average person here (outside the major cities) puts on about 8,000 - 10,000km per year (in the major cities, its probably lower -- they tend to make better use of the public transportation systems and many people don't even own cars). That is about 5,000 - 6,000 miles. Plus, the cars here are a lot smaller and get much better gas mileage. Since moving to Japan, we spend less on gas per month than we did in the US.