Going to war with the USSR wouldn't have solved Japan's main strategic problem, which was the embargo placed upon Japan's raw material imports by the Western powers.
Once that embargo was in place, the Japanese had less than two years in which to fight and win a war to get access to oil, rubber, and tin. In other words, they either had to fight a war that would get them those raw materials, or in two years, they would find themselves unable to fight anybody.
There was little in Eastern Siberia that could meet Japan's most pressing needs.
The US, British, and Dutch conditions for lifting their embargo were harsh: they demanded that the Japanese withdraw from both China and Indo-China. Japan was unwilling to do so without trying a war first, and that war more or less had to be waged upon the Western colonial empires in Asia: esp. Malaya and the Dutch East Indies.
Now Japan was aware that in the long run the USSR was a major regional rival. Japan's preference was always to be allied with Britain, but for a variety of reasons that alliance fell apart after World War One. Note that after WWII the Japanese were happy enough to have an alliance with a Western power against both Russia and China, and like the Germans, they felt somewhat vindicated by that arrangement.
The Japanese had a certain amount of respect for the Russian army, owing not only from the reverses they suffered in the border wars of the 1930's, but also dating from the Russo-Japanese war. The Japanese had won that war, but even then they regarded the Russians as dogged opponents on land.
But in the situation of 1941, Japan didn't really have a feasible option to invade the USSR. They weren't keen on starting a possible long war with Russia at the same time as they were cut off from vital raw materials.



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