世論 What Japan Thinks

A recent survey from iShare looked at the matter of the colour pink, in particular pink clothing.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 24th of March 2010 497 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.9% of the sample were male, 29.2% in their twenties, 34.4% in their thirties, and 36.4% in their forties.

I don’t have any pink items in my wardrobe, but pink on the right sort of men does look quite cool; pink for cuteness on women doesn’t work for me, although for elegance it does.

When the panel were asked which celebrities suited pink, top for women and second for men was the quite, quite horrendous fashion sense of Pei and Paako Hayashiya:

More suitable answers for men were Audrey’s Kasuga and the lounge lizard Junichi Ishida. For women, the choices were Seiko Matsuda, the irritatingly cutesy Yukorin and vapid Suzanne (she’s in the middle), then Nanako Matsushima and Ebi chan.
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The hanami, cherry blossom viewing, season is in full swing, which means all the popular areas are packed, making for not really a very pleasant experience in my opinion. Thus, this survey from iShare into hanami information sites looked into “air hanami”, just looking at the photos and not bothering visiting in person.

Demographics

Between the 10th and 15th of March 2010 548 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.9% of the sample were male, 33.9% in their twenties, 31.2% in their thirties, and 34.9% in their forties.

Watching the television this last weekend, I saw that Ueno Park in Tokyo had around 100,000 visitors on Saturday! I find the crowds too much bother, so I make do with looking at Kema Sakuranomiya Park in Osaka through the window of the train to and from work.

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This interesting survey from iShare took a look at outcome of arguments, which revealed the rather unbelievable statistic of more women than men apologising…

Demographics

Between the 5th and 10th of March 2010 509 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.0% of the sample were male, 31.8% in their twenties, 32.6% in their thirties, and 35.6% in their forties.

Although Q1 and Q2 don’t directly specify who people are arguing with in private, one can assume that one’s partner is often the other combatant, although as mentioned above, the number of women self-reporting that they apologise seems rather high. However, Q2SQ balances it out with nearly twice as many men indicating that apologies don’t always calm the other side down.
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Yet another survey on illegal downloads, this time from iShare, pussy-foots around the direct question of whether people have downloaded or not, although there are some interesting answers in the survey, for some reason entitled “the morals of young people“, suggesting there were a number of other unreported questions asked.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 9th of March 2010 834 people from the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 64.1% of the sample were male, 11.4% in their teens, and 88.4% in their twenties. This is quite an unusual survey demographic for iShare.

To educate the public, there has been a site set up to educate the public on the recent change in the law. The site is called in Japanese やめよう！違法ダウンロード, yameyou! Ihou download, Stop! Illegal Download, and can be found at the rather quaint URL http://www.happy-musiccycle.jp/.

The change in the law this January has outlawed download – up to then it was only illegal to upload; downloading was fine, even through P2P software, as long as you set it to leech mode only. The site has a FAQ with the answer to a few questions, including one interesting one that says it is still legal to burn a CD and give it to your mother. I would guess that CD rental shops fall under this clause so you are still free to rent’n'rip.
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Another popular topic for foreigners in Japan to whinge about is sneezing and the reluctance to cover coughs. So, this survey from iShare on that very topic perhaps gives us some concrete data on which to base our prejudices.

Demographics

Between the 3rd and 8th of March 2010 496 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.0% of the sample were male, 30.6% in their twenties, 33.9% in their thirties, and 35.5% in their forties.

The old codger sneeze in the title comes from Q3 and the phrase おじさんくさい, ojisan-kusai, a smell of old men. Recently, with hay fever and whatnot, I must admit to being rather loud and with a bit of excessive follow-through on my sneezes at home, although when out I almost always sneeze into my sleeve.
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There’s a lot of interesting figures in this recent survey from iShare into what makes people cry.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 25th of February 2010 502 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 32.7% in their twenties, 31.9% in their thirties, and 35.5% in their forties.

I was suprised that it was television that makes men cry the most, and also that few people feel that a good sob relieves lots of stress.

For me, it’s probably work that makes me cry the most…
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There comes a time in everyone’s life that keeping up appearances for the sake of the opposite sex becomes just too much bother, so goo Ranking took a look at when men and women felt their juices had stopped flowing.

Demographics

Over the 22nd and 23rd of January 2010 1,102 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were female, 12.6% in their teens, 18.4% in their twenties, 27.9% in their thirties, 25.5% in their forties, 9.3% in their fifties, and 6.3% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

The Japanese title of the survey is rather difficult to capture in English, so I’ve gone for a pun instead.

I’ve never been interested in 1 and 3 in the first place, so I don’t really know what that says about me!
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Yet another positive noise that the Democratic Party of Japan have made since coming into power is the discussion of a smoking ban to prevent second-hand smoking, a topic that was the subject of this recent survey from iShare. Like many other of the DPJ’s proposals, however, this is a rather half-baked idea that doesn’t at the moment have any fines proposed for non-compliance, and a lack of joined-up government has seen talk of punative cigarette tax shelved.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 23rd of February 2010 411 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.5% of the sample were male, 28.7% in their twenties, 32.6% in their thirties, and 38.7% in their forties.

Quite frankly, I find the smoking rates hard to believe. The usual figures I hear quoted are a little over 30% of men and 10% of women, yet here we have 23% and 12%, yet 19% male quitters and an incredible 18% female quitters!

I think there’s only one restaurant that I frequent that makes no particular attempt to separate smokers; all the rest are either all non-smoking or at least make a decent attempt to keep the smokers at bay.
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Last year Kirin started with Kirin Zero, a completely alcohol-free drink that supposedly tastes like beer, and they were soon followed by all the other major brewers. To see how people drink them, iShare conducted a survey into these beer taste soft drinks.

Demographics

Between the 15th and 18th of February 2010 509 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.6% of the sample were male, 31.8% in their twenties, 30.8% in their thirties, and 37.3% in their forties.

I’ve drunk one can once – well, I drunk half a can and poured the rest away. It did look quite beer-like in colour and head, but the taste was just like what I imagine fizzy hops tea would be.

It gets promoted at a couple of the restaurants that I frequent, but it always seems to be priced just the same as real beer, and much higher than ordinary fizzy drinks. I’d stick with ginger beer if I was in the situation of needing to drive after a drinking party!
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I’m not really sure how the pie chart I have extracted from this survey by iShare into body complexes relates to the subject, but I thought it was interesting enough to graph.

Demographics

Between the 3rd and 8th of February 2010 497 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.1% of the sample were male, 31.6% in their twenties, 29.4% in their thirties, and 39.0% in their forties.

I don’t have any complexes, I don’t think, although I used to have a thing about my teeth, but that was a justified complex as they were in a terrible state, so a good few visits to the dentist fixed all that.

I’d love to have seen hair as a separate category, as I think many Japanese men are conditioned by the media to expect to have a full head of black hair well into their middle age. I’m going a bit thin on top and silver in the stubble myself, but it seems to bother my wife more than me!
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