I came across news article about car ownership in Japan and I found it interesting. The survey (data obtained from car registration) that back in Showa 51 (1976) there were only 0.505 cars per household in Japan, back in 1976 about only half of homes in Japan had a car. Number has gradually increased since then and on Heisei 8 (1996) the number has reached 1.000 car per household, in 1996 there was one car per house in Japan. Number has increased since and peaked at Heisei 18 (2006) with 1.112 cars per household. But since 2006 number of car ownership started to decline and last year it was 1.052 cars per household.

The figure by prefecture. The prefecture with highest car ownership by household is Fukui with 1.736 cars per household, which indicates many homes at Fukui own two cars. It is pretty much know that in big city many people (especially younger generation) today do not own a car due to cost of owning a car (price of a car itself, parking space, maintenance, etc.) and traffic congestion in a big city many choose to take public transport rather than driving. This showed up on the survey also, Tokyo prefecture came out dead last at 47th with 0.432 cars per household. Second to last is Osaka prefecture with 0.645 cars per household.

Seems like in Japan people in country side rely on a car for transport where people in a big city rely on public transport for transport.