世論 What Japan Thinks

In addition to the the question posed in the headline, I’d like to ask my Tokyo-based readers if your Japanese friends have tried taking you there, and what did they want to take you to there?

I discovered today another new-to-me web site, but this time it’s of a rather prominent research company, Macromill Inc. They’ve got some interesting opinion poll results on their site, but one that caught my eye was this one on the image of the towns within Tokyo. Over one day at the end of September last year they interviewed 1,032 people from their online monitor group, evenly split 516 male and 516 female, and each sex also evenly split with 129 people in each age band from between 20 and 29, 30 to 39, 40 to 49, and 50 years or older.

This is a slightly old survey, and since I am not a Tokyo expert by any long shot, I’ll skip a full translation (although give me a shout if you would like to see more!) and instead focus on the most relevant portion for my readers, a couple of images related to foreigners. Note that although the Japanese word 外国人, gaikokujin, means anyone from overseas, it is usually taken as referring to non-Asian foreigners. (Is it? I and many other English-speaking foreigners often assert this, but is there any evidence to support or disprove this supposition?)

Also note that Q1 specifically mentions foreigner friends, so it is presumably not just where they would recommend the average tourist should go. On the other hand, the respondent may be thinking of a friend from abroad coming to Tokyo for the first time, so perhaps it is the tourist spots that they are thinking of?

Q1: Where would you like to take foreigner friends to? (Sample size=1,032, up to three choices)

Asakusa	42.1%
Roppongi	17.0%
Akihabara	11.9%
Shinjuku	11.7%
Ginza	10.1%
Shibuya	6.3%
Ueno	6.0%
Harajuku	5.8%
Tokyo	5.1%
Omotesando	3.3%

Next, people were asked to choose from a list of nineteen attributes and for each of the districts Ginza, Nihonbashi, Asakusa, Shinbashi, Shiodome, Shibuya, Harajuku, Roppongi, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, Ebisu, Omotesando, Akihabara, and Shinagawa, select the attributes that they associate with each of the locations.

Q2: What image does Asakusa have? (Sample size=1,032, multiple answer)

Working-class	66.3%
Traditional	61.0%
Cultural, artistic	42.2%
Lively	30.0%
International	24.7%

Only the upper-class image of Ginza (74.4%) and the youth-oriented nature of Shibuya and Harajuku (74.0% and 72.5% respectively) was stronger than the plebian image of Asakusa, and its traditionalness was the next strongest image overall. Ginza’s adult-oriented nature at 55.7% was the only other image that registered with more than half the respondents.