Consider Northern California has about 900MW of geothermal installed and the state isn't really known for geothermal activity. Japan which is known for that, what are they doing?
To give California some credit, it is slightly physically larger than Japan, has far more open space without people despite the bay area (my first thought was "would they really be willing to wreck the onsens and such that have been there for a thousand years?"), is on active tectonic plates, and has been pretty focused on this for a while.
