世論 What Japan Thinks

With Japan due back from Germany tomorrow morning (no, I have no confidence in them being able to beat Brazil by two clear goals), let’s look at a recent ranking survey by DIMSDRIVE Research on what people would like to see a World Cup of. They interviewed 4,597 members of their internet monitor group, with 2,383, or 51.8%, male.

Note that many of the sports mentioned already have world championships, so perhaps people mean they want to see coverage of these events, or they are ignorant of their existence, as I was too until I started searching. The links you see below go to existing world championships or world federations of the sports mentioned, or just news of such events.

Note also that the top three involve food either directly or indirectly.

Q: What do you think would be an interesting or fun thing to have a World Cup of? (Sample size=4,597, free answer)

Rank	Event	Votes
1	Big eating	115
2	Sumo	136
3	Cooking or chefs	115
4	Tug-of-war	83
5	Baseball	75
6	Comedy	69
7	Fast eating	67
8	Video games	66
9	Rock Paper Scissors	60
10	Keyboard typing	54

I’m amazed that baseball was fifth; have people forgotten that Japan won it only two months ago?

Q: What do you think would be an interesting or fun thing to have a World Cup of? (Sample size=4,597, by sex, free answer)

Rank	Event	Male votes N=2,383	Rank	Event	Female votes N=2,214
1	Sumo	90	1	Big eating	73
2	Big eating	82	2	Cooking or chefs	71
3	Tug-of-war	56	3	Sumo	46
4	Baseball	52	4	Comedy	41
5	Video games	48	5	Tug-of-war	27
6	Fast eating	45	6	Keyboard typing	26
7	Cooking or chefs	44	7	Baby crawling	25
8	Rock Paper Scissors	39	8	Jump rope	24
9=	Comedy	28	9=	Baseball	23
9=	Keyboard typing	28	9=	Sweets	23
			9=	Dance	23

Looking through the detailed age breakdown for strange or entertaining sports, I find things like mobile phone speed keying, the extremely generic “Quiz”, Mah-jongg, Kendama, unarmed combat, 31-legged race (like a three-legged race, only with 31 legs instead!), mental arithmetic and memory, shogi and go, shouting (yes, this is a “sport” that has even featured at our work’s sports day), and magic.