世論 What Japan Thinks

It’s been quite a while since I’ve translated a survey looking at how Japanese spend their early mornings or similar topics, but this survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, into this matter revealed suprising results.

Demographics

Over the 2nd and 3rd of April 2012 1,104 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 16.1% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 15.9% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

The weekend waking times are surprising for me on two counts; first, although personally I wake at 5:30 on weekdays, at the weekend I catch up by sleeping in to 11 am to 12 am. Second, when I stayed in the company dormitory, although I was always close to last out on weekdays, leaving at 10 am on weekends I was one of the first people out. Thus, I believed what the average salaried worker would physically need to sleep in on weekends to catch up on weekday sleep depravation.

Research results

First the sample were asked when they usually got out of bed on weekdays when they had work, school, or other appointments. 41.8% said from 6 am to 7 am, 22.6% from 7 am to 8 am, 19.5% from 5 am to 6 am, 6.3% from 8 am to 9 am, and the remaining 9.8% at other unspecified times.

When it came to weekends and holidays, 25.4% got up at 7 am to 8 am, 22.0% from 8 am to 9 am, 15.1% from 6 am to 7 am. There was another 9.7% who got up earlier than 6 am, so these 107 were asked why. Top reasons included preparing for the day, that it was good for health, and that they had to make breakfast, etc. Other answers included that it had just become a habit and in order to make some free time for themselves.

Next they were asked if they checked the news after they woke up. 64.6% said they did, 16.8% didn’t and presumably the remaining 18.6% only sometimes did. The 713 news checkers were then asked the following.

Q1: How do you go about checking news in the morning? (Sample size=713, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Television	593	83.2%
Newspaper	289	40.5%
Internet news site via computer	213	29.9%
Internet news site via mobile phone, smartphone	169	23.7%
Radio	69	8.4%
Other	3	0.4%