世論 What Japan Thinks

I cannot really think of a longer headline that is not excessively blatant linkbait, so I’ll leave that as the simple title for a survey from iShare into another demographic that they may well have just made up especially for this survey, which had the full title of modern women’s healing.

Demographics

Over the 13th and 14th of December 2010 1,149 female members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 11.7% of the sample were in their twenties, 54.8% in their thirties, and 33.4% in their forties.

Edison once said that genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration; in Japan it is the ninety-nine percent perspiration that is often more valued, regardless of the presence or absence of any associated genius or inspiration. A gambaru girl is the sort of woman who is always busy around the house or the office, so this survey looks at what they do or would like to do to unwind.
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I’m back from my holidays (which did not include any skiing) to report on a survey from iShare on the dangers of skiing.

Demographics

Over the 30th of November and the 1st of December 2010 1,476 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 62.7% of the sample were male, 20.0% in their twenties, 24.5% in their thirties, 31.1% in their forties, and 24.4% in their fifties. Note that the ski season would have barely started in Japan at the time of the survey, and only a few remote locations would have been open.

I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t a question about skiing overseas; although the skiing in Japan is very good, I would have liked to know how many people had gone on foreign skiing holidays.

Last time I went skiing was an overnight work trip back in Scotland, and I got horrendous sunburn as no-one told me that the UV reflects off the snow and hits your face from all angles!
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The latest company to jump into the fray by covering the tobacco tax hike and quitting smoking were DIMSDRIVE Research.

Demographics

Between the 6th and 21st of October 2010 5,170 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.0% of the sample were female, 14.2% in their twenties, 36.8% in their thirties, 33.8% in their forties, 13.3% in their fifties, and 1.9% aged sixty or older.

In Q2SQ2, how much cheaper a pack people switched to, the average was over 100 yen a pack; given the tax rise was about 100 yen, they cancel themselves out, but as far as I am aware almost brands are within 40 or 50 yen of each other, so I don’t really know how people managed to save over 100 yen, unless they were talking about per case of 200 or some other bulk-buying.

At two of my favourite restaurants the number of smokers has dropped to either none or just one group recently, although I don’t know how much that has to do with the rise in duty.
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Rice has the image as the main staple of the Japanese dining table, so this recent survey from goo Research looked at rice and eating habits to find out the truth behind the stereotype.

Demographic

Between the 15th and 18th of November 2010 1,295 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.1% of the sample were female, 16.4% in their teens, 16.8% in their twenties, 16.3% in their thirties, 16.8% in their forties, 16.8% in their fifties, and 16.8% aged sixty or older.

We buy all our rice these days over the internet, and usually a different brand or region every time; we’re currently on Shiga rice of a brand whose name I couldn’t read. We sometimes pick up brown rice or brown rice blends, which makes a change from sometimes quite bland white rice.

However, if you think Japanese rice is bland, may I suggest getting a new rice cooker? We recently replaced our old one which cooked everything into a glutenous mulch, but now with the new one each grain remains distinct and much more pleasent on my tastebuds. I still miss Basmati, however…

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A recent survey from Macromill Research becomes my first look at Christmas 2010.

Demographics

Between the 25th and 27th of November 2010 500 members of the Macromill monitor group resident within Tokyo or the surrounding prefectures of Chiba, Saitama and Kanagawa completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, 24.8% were in their twenties, 25.2% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, and 24.8% in their fifties.

My Christmas Eve will be spent at home, and Christmas Day is with the parents-in-law, which sounds more interesting than it actually will be. It’s not any Christmas event, but just that we bought them a terrestrial digital-ready television last month and the first available delivery date turned out to be December 25th, so we need to go along to make sure we get all the paperwork to claim back our eco points.
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A recent survey from iShare took a look at strong and cool Japanese men, a follow-on from looks at strong and cool Japanese women, guys earning more than 10 million yen and guys with more than 10 million in the bank.

Demographics

Over the 27th and 28th of October 2010 1,856 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service in full-time employment and with a driving license completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 72.6% of the sample were male, 8.2% were in their twenties, 49.9% in their thirties, and 41.8% in their forties.

In Q10, not surprisingly Ken Watanabe (Last Samurai, Inception, etc) comes first – he’s the Japanese star I’d most like to meet.

Comparing with the woman’s results, for the blood type question the O and A percentages are basically reversed. Disappointly, however, there is no answer “I just don’t care” for that one. However, when it comes to real matters like work-life balance, for both strong and cool men and strong and cool women the figures were very similar. It might be interesting to have a follow-on questionnaire on the differences between images of the two sexes.
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Here’s an interesting look by DIMSDRIVE Research at one particular Japanese word, 面倒くさい, mendokusai, bothersome. The word can be literally translated as “the smell of trouble”, and I always internally translated it as “a pain in the bum”, thus the title of today’s post.

Demographics

Between the 28th of April and the 12th of May 2010 13,802 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group managed to make enough effort to fill in a private online questionnaire. 52.4% of the sample were male, 0.6% in their teens, 8.5% in their twenties, 28.1% in their thirties, 32.8% in their forties, 18.9% in their fifties, and 11.0% aged sixty or older.

Here’s one Japanese-English dictionary with a number of example sentences.

I often mutter mendokusai under my breath at work, usually at procedures at work that are far more complicated than they need be. I did spend five minutes typing out a description of one of the work procedures, but then realised that there’s another even bigger pain in the bum, but as it’s too mendokusai for me to type it out, tough!

I’ll stick with mendokusai throughout this article, because as you can see from Q2SQ1, there are many nuances.
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One of the top tourist spots in Tokyo is Tokyo Tower, and a new tourist attraction under construction is the Tokyo Sky Tree, so this survey took a look at what people think of Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Sky Tree.

Demographics

Between the 27th of May and the 10th of June 2010 8,199 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 50.0% male, 0.8% were in their teens, 11.1% in their twenties, 31.5% in their thirties, 31.8% in their forties, 16.9% in their fifties, and 7.9% aged sixty or older.

Tokyo Sky Tree is a dreadful name (yes, they use the English words) but it’s an amazing tower. When complete it will be 634 metres high to the tip of its antenna, the tallest tower in the world. The height is easy to remember as it’s a mnemonic (why is that word so hard to remember how to spell?) for Musashi, the old name for the area in which it was built. Enough talk, here’s a picture of it from TANAKA Juuyoh on flickr.