世論 What Japan Thinks

Ahh, stress in Japan, I could write a book on it, but look, I’ve just got far too many things on my plate piling up already and I just can’t take my attention away from them and will you stop asking me to write more on it as I am planning on getting round to it but it’s rather difficult finding the time and I love my family more than my blogging; is that a crime? as you seem to be suggesting but then MyVoice published the results of a survey on stress.

Demographics

Over the first five days of July 2007 13,030 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was male, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% aged fifty or older.

One cold shower and two cold beers later: stress, and its darker cousin depression, is a serious problem in Japan, I feel, but not one that is very well understood. For example, a health-related magazine I read had a wee depression comic strip: guy transfers to a new devision as a team leader, gets under pressure and tries to live up to unreasonable expectations, working all hours, getting irritated and other classic symptoms. He goes to to talk to his old boss (over reasonable quantities of sake, of course) who tells him to not be so diligent and learn to delegate. And they all lived happily ever after. Ooh, and don’t get me started on reading advice from someone who should know better that ciggies and booze can relieve some stress.

I also wonder how much stress affects men in the trouser department, an unasked question below, as I suspect working on stress reduction (and fatigue reduction too) by for instance rationalising working hours could have a noticeable positive effect on the birth rate. Of course, I realise that changing the current working system is effectively impossible, but we have to have our dreams.
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One thing you soon notice in Japan is that a lot of people drink little bottles of… well, I’ve never really quite worked out exactly what is in these little bottles, but basically some supposedly healthy concoction. I did have one foreign friend who drunk them, but the smell of them was enough to put me off ever trying! To find out what the Japanese themselves are consuming, MyVoice performed a survey on these health drinks.

Demographics

Over the first five days of June 2007 13,228 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed an online survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

I suspect that some of these drinks do tend to quackery, but I don’t know what testing is required for them before they make their claims, although I would hazard a guess that the answer would be “not much”. Some of the advertisements have small captions saying that they are restricted to people over 15 and only one per day, so perhaps I should investigate the reason for that, although the cynical part of me says that it is just to try to convice the viewer of the potency of the brew.
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One of the latest fads in fruit these days seems to be the above “Godzilla’s egg”, an egg-shaped watermelon weighing in at a good few kilograms. As for me, one thing I miss in Japan is a real pear-shaped and pear-flavoured pear, not the watery apple-like thing that is all too common. Melons seem to missing something too, and don’t get me started on other entertainingly-shaped watermelons. However, I can’ t think of a smooth seque into a recent survey conducted by Yahoo! Japan Value Insight (ex infoPLANT) into the subject of fruit.

Demographics

Over the 29th and 30th of June 2007 300 members of the Yahoo! Japan Value Insight internet monitor panel completed an online questionnaire. Exactly 50:50 were male and female, but age groups are not listed, although these sorts of surveys from Value Insight tend to have the numbers in each age group evenly distributed.

You know when you’ve been in Japan too long when you order grapefruitS juice when speaking English.

There were also a few bonus facts added to the report. The full survey was 19 questions long, but just the highlights are in the translated article.

When buying Chuhai (cheap fruit-flavoured alcoholic drinks) rather than price it was flavour that was most important.

The survey was conducted a week after Snapple Peach and Rose Tea went on sale, and 13% were curious about the mix of peach and rose.

About one in three women were interested in buying high-quality fruit juices.

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I’m personally not convinced that natsu-bate, fatigue brought on by the summer heat, really does exist as a diagnosable illness, or whether it is just another thing the Japanese like to complain about, just like stiff shoulders. Regardless of whether it is real or not, here comes another slighly incongruous double-header from goo Research, conducted in conjunction with the Yomiuri Shimbun, looking at both the upcoming upper house elections and the summer heat.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 24th of June 2007 546 people in their teens to their thirties who were members of the goo Research monitor group completed an internet-based questionnaire. The group was split 50:50 male and female, and 37% attended school or university, 26% were full-time company employees, and 13% were homemakers. More detailed information was not presented.

I’m not particularly surprised by Junichiro Koizumi coming tops of the poll, and Abe barely ranking, but I am surprised by the foreign secretary Taro Aso coming second, but after his recent Alzheimer’s comment, I wonder if he would drop out of the rankings were the survey repeated today.
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[part 1] [part 2]

With almost three-quarters of Japanese reckoning that they themselves need to lose a few kilos, and with Billy’s Boot Camp flying off the shelves, not least because for men metabolic syndrome is the in cause of concern, and for women the summer and the associated revealing fashions are fast approaching. This recent survey by DIMSDRIVE Research on weight-loss dieting offered me so many possible headline opportunities, and I succumbed to the temptation to stuff in as many sweet keywords as I could.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 31st of May 2007 DIMSDRIVE Research interviewed 8,408 members of its online monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 43.1% of the sample was male, 0.8% in their teens, 15.0% in their twenties, 35.9% in their thirties, 28.8% in their forties, 13.9% in their fifties, and 5.6% aged sixty or older.

Television still remains the most popular source for information on dieting, despite the infamous natto diet scandal at the start of the year. Not terribly suprisingly, I think, Norkia chan is the body shape women most desire, while Hiromi Go, an aging-but-not-really-showing-it singer is tops for men, and not a person I would have considered.
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[part 1] [part 2]

With almost three-quarters of Japanese reckoning that they themselves need to lose a few kilos, and with Billy’s Boot Camp flying off the shelves, not least because for men metabolic syndrome is the in cause of concern, and for women the summer and the associated revealing fashions are fast approaching. This recent survey by DIMSDRIVE Research on weight-loss dieting offered me so many possible headline opportunities, and I succumbed to the temptation to stuff in as many sweet keywords as I could.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 31st of May 2007 DIMSDRIVE Research interviewed 8,408 members of its online monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 43.1% of the sample was male, 0.8% in their teens, 15.0% in their twenties, 35.9% in their thirties, 28.8% in their forties, 13.9% in their fifties, and 5.6% aged sixty or older.

Note that Billy and Norika don’t make an appearance in this survey until tomorrow’s part 2 post, so you’ll just have to wait!

I too, despite being underweight for my height, could do with losing (or moving elsewhere) a couple of kilos of spare tyre. Actually taking more exercise in addition to just walking between stations would help, but just cutting down on snacks is my lazy way out, I suppose.
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This is one of these surveys that catches my eye and informs and entertains me at the same time, but also frustrates me as I’d love to learn more. What are mobile phones? Toys, fashion statements, or just lumps of plastic and electronics? japan.internet.com reported on a recent survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc on mobile phone obsessions. The article just presented a summary of some of the more interesting questions asked.

Demographics

Over the 6th and 7th of June 2007 300 mobile phone-using members of Cross Marketing’s online monitor group completed a private internet-based survey. The group was split 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

Note, I translated one of these difficult to get the right nuance for Japanese words, こだわる, kodawaru, as obsess, although perhaps the English word is a bit too strong.

In Q3, looking at other people’s phones, I wonder how much is checking out the actual phone type versus checking out their dangly bits or trying to sneak a peek at their email…
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Much as I might have thought that there would be a sizeable geek population who would have a copy of Linux installed somewhere on one of their home machines, especially given the multiple machine ownership data, a recent article published on japan.internet.com regarding a survey conducted by goo Research on the topic of computers at home suggests otherwise.

Demographics

Between the 15th and 17th of June 2007 1,087 members of goo Research’s monitor pool successfully completed an online questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample was male, 17.4% in their teens, 19.7% in their twenties, 17.8% in their thirties, 17.3% in their forties, 17.0% in their fifties, and 10.9% aged sixty or older.

I’m Windows XP on my one home-brew, and if I were upgrading, the main factors controlling my decision would of course be price, followed by at least one gigabyte of memory and perhaps 150 gigs of hard disk. One gig of RAM – I remember when I was a kid trying to persuade my father to let my brother and I raid our savings to buy a 16K ZX81 wobbly RAM pack for a mere £100.
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What do Japanese men think being handsome is? Do they themselves want to be handsome? This rather intriguing subject was investigated in a survey conducted by DIMSDRIVE Research and sponsored by DIME magazine, a rather popular trend-watching magazine. I hope there will be a follow-up for the women to describe what they think a man is, or for them to describe beautifulness.

Demographics

Over the 31st of May and the first of June 2007 2,990 male members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group replied to a private internet-based questionnaire. 0.7% were in their teens, 9.6% in their twenties, 26.5% in their thirties, 34.5% in their forties, 19.2% in their fifties, and 9.5% aged sixty or older.

I wouldn’t consider myself handsome (note that the word I translated as “handsome” is 男前, otokomae, although the meaning is perhaps closer to having an aura of manliness or charisma. The ALC dictionary amusingly translates it as studmuffin!), but I think (or at least I hope!) my wife would disagree. As for my regular personal grooming habits, I don’t think that pulling out nose hairs with my bare hands at home or at the office really counts for much. You may also note that getting one’s teeth regularly descaled or whitened didn’t rate even in the Other category of Q6.

If I were to name a handsome man, I’d probably choose Sean Connery.
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Many Japanese hold the dream of retiring overseas (or do they? I must look up data!), so goo Ranking decided to investigate this issue by asking an unspecificed number of the goo Research online monitor group of unspecified ages if they were to retire and move overseas, which country or area would they most like to live in. The fieldwork for this research was conducted on the 22nd and 23rd of May 2007.

Perhaps connected to this, wifey has recently applied to Hilton Grand Vacations Club for us to go along and attend a 90 minute seminar on timeshares in Hawaii in return for 10,000 yen’s worth of food coupons. They are running the seminars every weekend at Tokyo and Osaka, so if you’re particularly bored this summer and don’t mind enduring some hard sell, why not go along and get free cash off them?

If I were to do so, going back to Blighty would seem like the obvious choice, but if we exclude there, New Zealand is the most attractive location, a bit like Scotland only with slightly better weather.

(I’ve just checked my dictionary, and the Antipodes is a rather UK-centric term for Australia and New Zealand)
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