世論 What Japan Thinks

One of my New Year resolutions was to stop doing FAIL headlines, but it falls by the wayside with this look from goo Ranking at what things about New Year nengajo postcards give you that FAIL feeling.

Demographics

On the 19th of November 2009 1,166 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 59.9% of the sample were female, 13.4% in their teens, 20.6% in their twenties, 28.2% in their thirties, 23.2% in their forties, 8.3% in their fifties, and 6.3% aged sixty or older.

This is not FAILs on one’s own behalf, but the sinking feeling seeing the sender’s fail.

As my wife has a relatively common family name, but it is spelt with an uncommon combination of kanji characters, name mistakes are par for the course, although she does get a little annoyed if someone gets her given name wrong. I’ve once had the all blank card, and all my postcards this year were all print as I just didn’t feel like adding a few words extra. I also got the unknown postcard this year from (I think) an ex-colleague who I might have invited to my wedding, but I just couldn’t place a face to the name!

If I cared about him, I would have also had a feeling of disappointment when for the second year in a row when my boss sent my postcard to my old address, and even though they will often return incorrectly-addressed postcards before the New Year, he instead handed a card to me (and another person in the office) on the second day at work.

Ranking result

Q: What things about New Year negajo postcards give you a feeling of disappointment as soon as you lay your eyes on them? (Sample size=1,166)

Rank		Score
1	There’s a mistake in my name	100
2	It’s a commercial card	90.0
3	It’s all blank	73.4
4	They used a previous year’s postcard	72.0
5	I don’t know who it’s from (unknown or no name)	68.7
6	It’s all printed, no handwriting	63.3
7	It’s not an official New Year postcard	56.6
8	They wrote the wrong year number on the card	44.4
9	There’s Happy NY, BW, other abbreviated greetings on the card	38.7
10	I told them I was in mourning but they sent a card anyway	38.5
11	There’s a comment, photograph that doesn’t fit with our relationship	33.6
12	There’s an over-Photoshopped image of the sender on the card	26.3
13	It’s from someone I’ve had a fight with, split up from	23.5
14	There’s New Year resolutions written all over the card	21.1
15	It’s been written in ballpoint pens or pencil only	15.1
16	The sender has a photo of themselves dressed up as this year’s zodiac animal	13.9
17	The card arrives after I’ve met the person at work	12.1
18	It’s decorated with stick-on jewels, etc	6.7
19	It’s just a little oddly fancy postcard	6.1
20	It’s just too artistic a postcard	4.7