世論 What Japan Thinks

This is my first translation from JR Tokai Express Research, apparently part of the Central Japan Railways group of companies, and it’s a very topical subject, a look at what people are thinking about regarding the upcoming Turin Olympics. They interviewed 436 people by means of an internet questionnaire over four days at the start of February, although it is not clear how they collected this sample. 110 people were in their twenties, 111 in their thirties, 110 in their forties, 110 in their fifties and 95 ages sixty or over. The numbers for each sex is not given.

Although the host city’s name in English is Turin, the Japanese use (as would be expected, of course) the Italian pronunciation as the guide for adopting it into Japanese, thus Torino. As one of these “You know you’ve been in Japan too long…” moments, I’m familiar with the locations of Torino, Firenze, Munchen, etc, but occasionally I have to pause to translate Vienna and Naples in order to understand where they are. Mind you, back when I was a kid, and in fact up until I was about 25 years old or so, I was under the impression that Ibiza and Eye-bee-tha were two totally separate places.

Q1: How interested are you in the Turin Olympics? (Sample size=436)

Totally interested	29%
Rather interested	45%
Not really interested	20%
Not at all interested	6%

Note that the following two tables were presented as graphs without any labels, so the exact percentages are rather inaccurate. I have also omitted a lot of the mid-ranking entries.

Q2: Which of the following sports do you intend to follow? (Sample size=436, multiple answer)

	Definitely watch	Watch if possible	Want to know result	No interest
Figure skating	60%	35%	4%	1%
Ski jumping	25%	50%	22%	3%
Speed skating	25%	50%	20%	5%
Moguls	20%	40%	25%	15%
…
Curling	2%	16%	47%	35%
Luge	1%	16%	45%	38%
Biathlon	0.5%	15%	50%	35%

Q3: What are your medal expectations for the following sports? (Sample size=436, multiple answer)

	Absolutely expect	Quite expect	Don’t really expect	No expectation at all
Figure skating	65%	30%	3%	2%
Speed skating	45%	40%	10%	5%
Moguls	30%	40%	20%	10%
Snowboarding	25%	40%	22%	13%
Ski jumping	22%	48%	20%	10%
Snowboarding	22%	40%	23%	15%
…
Biathlon	2%	20%	50%	33%
Luge	1%	15%	47%	37%
Skeleton	0.5%	18%	45%	36%