世論 What Japan Thinks

Between the 1st and 5th of April 2007 MyVoice surveyed its online community regarding their feelings regarding global warming. New visitors may want to check out previous environmental-themed surveys.

Demographics

17,500 people completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

I’ve not seen “An Inconveient Truth” myself, although my wife did go to see the Japanese subtitled version. She did find the message compelling, but she couldn’t recommend the movie itself as she felt the tone was too hectoring, although I don’t know if that was a fault with the original version or of the translation.
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Spring is sprung and the sap is rising, and young thoughts turn to love, so let’s enjoy a recent survey from goo Research, conducted between the 27th and 29th of March 2007 amongst 555 single youths, most in their twenties, from all over Japan, on the matters of love and laughter. Note that the male-female split is not reported.

It does seem a rather disjoint pair of topics, but the answers are rather interesting. I do find it amusing that half as many women are in love than men, which perhaps prompts the question “what exactly does ‘love’ mean to you?” Alternatively, perhaps it is the unwillingness of men to commit themselves to a serious relationship, or just that women have stronger passions than men.

Note that the word used in the survey for being in love is 恋愛, ren’ai.

Let’s get a little personal, ack, no, let’s not get too personal, as I’ll sound far too soppy! I’ll just say it was common values that was the main spark for me, as well as that special magic, and it didn’t take too long (a month and a half?) for me to realise that we would marry. Oh, and we met through an “Other” method.
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Excuse the rather clumsy headline, but Macromill recently interviewed 309 members of their internet research monitor group who currently worked as either private or public employees and expressed a wish to enter or re-enter further education as mature students.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 5th of April 2007 309 people completed a private online questionnaire; 66.0% were male, 35.6% in their twenties, 42.1% in their thirties, 18.8% in their forties, and 3.6% in their fifties. All of them were considering entering a Japanese university as an under-graduate or post-graduate within the next five years.

In addition, 13.9% were married with no children, 27.8% married with children, 52.8% were single with no children, 0.6% were single, with children, but didn’t need to support them, and 1.3% were married with children that didn’t need to be supported. Regarding education levels, 11.0% had post-graduate qualifications, 57.6% had graduated from university, 14.2% attended college, 16.2% attended up to high school, 0.3% to middle school, and 0.6% didn’t answer.

Sadly, this survey does not highlight those wishing to do MBAs. Additionally, a number of UK and USA universities offering distance learning MBA courses in conjuction with Japanese institutions, but whether or not these would be counted as Japanese courses for the sake of this survey is not clear.
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It’s the weekend, so what nicer than joining the Japanese in one of their favourite pastimes, going for a drive. Before one can go for a drive, one needs a car of course, so why not rent one? But, what points are important when renting a car? goo Rankings tried to find out in this ranking survey conducted between the 20th and 22nd of March 2007.

I rent a car once every few months or so, and I always select Toyota Rentacar, as they are convenient, have car navigation systems as standard, and I especially like renting the Prius as although it might be a bit more expensive, the low fuel costs make up for it, and I do like driving it. A non-smoking car is a given, naturally, and only recently did Toyota introduce booking a specific model as non-smoking, hopefully due to complaints from customers like me.

Just in case you want to rent but your Japanese is not up to it, Hertz use Toyota as their agent in Japan, so you can call them instead to do your booking.
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DIMSDRIVE Research recently conducted a poll on the subject of check-out shopping bags, the plastic bags most supermarkets give away free to shoppers. However, some chains have introduced charges for bags, most of the others encourage people to bring their own, and there is talk of introducing legislation to force all shops to charge for bags.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 15th of March, 2007 7,504 members of DIMSDRIVE’s online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.4% of the sample was female, just 0.3% were in their teens, 16.6% in their twenties, 36.9% in their thirties, 27.9% in their forties, 13.7% in their fifties, and 4.6% aged sixty or older. 65.2% were married; 42.5% worked full-time in the private or public sectors, 24.2% were homemakers, 12.8% were part-timers, 9.2% were self-employed, 5.7% were unemployed (including retirees), 2.9% were students and 2.7% had other employment statuses.

Note that as well as taking your own bag with you, some supermarkets offer baskets for sale. In addition, if you refuse bags, supermarkets often offer points that may be collected and exchanged for gifts.

Last time I was in Austria shopping at a Spar in Vienna, they only had pay-for bags, costing, if I remember correctly, a not insignificant number of Euro cents (60 or so?), but this was for a large and substantial bag, which I think is a far better idea than charging for the current bags which are difficult to reuse for anything other than collecting household garbage, and I think people may be more understanding about paying for something valuable and definitely reuseable.

I’m also glad to see Q1, the frequency of visiting supermarkets, a figure I’ve been interested in finding out for a while!

UPDATE: I see that in the UK, Sainbury’s have launched an “I’m not a plastic bag” bag that seems to have caused quite a stir! Would a similar campaign work here, I wonder, although reading the article I don’t know if they are actually going to be used by the general public, or just kept as keepsakes or investments.
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Over the first five days at the start of March MyVoice surveyed their internet community on the topic of personal computers. Note that I will use the term PC throughout, but the survey includes Macs and other kinds of home computers too.

Demographics

15,786 people successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 15% in their fifties.

As a side-note, I’ve often wondered by MyVoice has no-one over fifty-nine in their samples. Do they have to leave the online community once they reach that age? Do they really mean in their fifties or older in the group? Perhaps I should email them.

Back on PCs, I have a home-built effort, so if I define buying a new one as upgrading the motherboard, I think it was last changed in the year 2000. Marriage does tend to realign your purchasing priorities, or more precisely one gets one’s purchasing priorities realigned for one. I’m still blogging away on a 900 MHz AMD Athlon, and whilst I’d love to buy a dockable portable, or just anything with a quieter fan, sadly my budget is assigned to other things.
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Over the first five days at the start of March MyVoice surveyed their internet community on the topic of water purifiers and filters.

Demographics

15,793 people successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 20% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

Although Japan is rich in natural water resources, as is the case in many other urbanised countries, after passing through much pipework (although no humans, I don’t think) and much processing the city tap water has rather a distinct flavour. In addition, there is the (usually unfounded) worry about bacteria and the like in the public water system, thus many people choose to use water purifying systems.

I’m not sure how to read the answers for Q4. For example, one in five doesn’t use tap water in the bath – I presume this must mean they don’t use cold water, as in the Japanese language hot water is distinct from cold, and perhaps there are some mysterious properties of heating to 50°C that makes it acceptable for use in the tub.
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Over the first five days of March this year MyVoice looked at the consumption of lactic-acid bacilli-laden fermented milk drinks such as Yakult, Calpis or Labre, or just plain old drinking yoghurt.

Demographics

16,032 members of their online community successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifites.

I drink low-fat (or is it low sugar? or both?) Yakult almost every morning, delivered door-to-door once a week. Whether or not it does me any good is debatable, it seems… On the other hand, they have the Tokuho mark on their bottles, which implies that it has passed some sort of testing of its claims in Japan.
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Between the 18th of January and the 4th of February the Cabinet Office Japan conducted a survey into what people thought about society.

Demographics

10,000 people were selected randomly from all Japanese citizens aged 20 or older for face-to-face interviews. 5,585 people were available and agreed to take part. 54.5% of the sample was female, 7.9% in their twenties, 14.8% in their thirties, 15.2% in their forties, 21.0% in their fifties, 20.8% in their sixties, 15.4% in their seventies, and 4.8% aged 80 or older. 74.6% were married, 11.8% were divorced or widowed, and 13.5% never married.

Another knee-jerk from many in the foreign community was when Japan’s Health Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa talked about it being only natural that couples want at least two children. Some bloggers did go against the trend, I’m glad to say, and this survey shows that the majority of married people want, in fact, three children, and even the younger generation much prefer two to one or zero.

At least the topic of children brings out the brighter side of the Japanese. Education costs are a major concern, as even most public schools require the parents to pay for the basics like text books..
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Between the 18th of January and the 4th of February the Cabinet Office Japan conducted a survey into what people thought about society.

Demographics

10,000 people were selected randomly from all Japanese citizens aged 20 or older for face-to-face interviews. 5,585 people were available and agreed to take part. 54.5% of the sample was female, 7.9% in their twenties, 14.8% in their thirties, 15.2% in their forties, 21.0% in their fifties, 20.8% in their sixties, 15.4% in their seventies, and 4.8% aged 80 or older. 74.6% were married, 11.8% were divorced or widowed, and 13.5% never married.

People do not seem very enamoured by the government in Q7! As in part 1, in Q11 and Q12 there seems to be significantly more pessimists than optimists. Interestingly, however, is that in Q8 “cohesiveness of the people”, perhaps another way of phrasing “homogeneous”, comes very low in the list of praiseworthy aspects of Japan, despite what Bummei Ibuki might think. Personally speaking, I have to agree with him on this if you look at the data from a statistical viewpoint.
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