世論 What Japan Thinks

Over the first five days at the start of February, MyVoice asked their online monitor group about exercise.

Demographics

13,158 people successfully completed the online questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

Note that walking in Q1 implies walking for the sake of exercise, not just walking through the station or on the way to work, unless it is deliberately for exercise, although the exact dividing line is unclear and up to the individual to choose. I must admit to being in the couch potato class; indeed recently due to changing the line I commute by, I’ve eliminated a 10 minute walk between home and the station. Plans to join a gym last Autumn were never realised.
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goo Research recently published the results of some research conducted in cooperation with Yomiuri Shimbun into fish and shellfish, conducted amongst their online monitor group between the 16th and 18th of the February.

Demographics

1,091 successfully completed the questionnaire. 50.3% were male, 21.8% in their twenties, 18.4% in their thirties, 21.6% in their forties, 17.5% in their fifties, and 20.6% aged sixty or older.

Note that in Q7 just 1% eat fish or shellfish less than once a month, which suggests that vegetarianism still has a long, long way to go in Japan! In addition, I wouldn’t be surprised if a significant part of that 1% included people who eat meat instead.

You may be interested in cross-referencing this with another recent survey on tuna habits and quota cut awareness.
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Following a link I spotted entitled Nearly Half Believe “Expert” Health Advice Dispensed on Boob Tube on Rising Sun of Nihon, I tracked down the original survey on health information dispensed by television programs, conducted by the Institute of Future Technology in the middle of February. The only demographic information available is that 1,055 people completed a web-based survey.

This survey was conducted after the Aru Aru Daijiten natto scandal blew up, so that should be kept in mind when viewing the results.
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As a sort-of follow-up to yesterday’s survey on holidays involving overnight stays, this time we’ll look at a survey by infoPLANT into both overnight and day return trips. The fieldwork was carried out over a period of six days in the middle of January. Note that the full paid-for survey contains many more questions.

Demographics

1,500 members of the infoPLANT questionnaire panel responded to the survey. The sample was balanced 50:50 male and female in each age group, and exactly 20% in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and sixties or older.

I’m surprised (actually, I’m not surprised, really) by the top holiday information source being television travel programs. I remember back in the UK the travel programs would have the staff joining a standard tour, sometimes with family, often staying in middle-of-the-road hotels, and participating in the usual activities that the average holidaymaker might take part in, resulting in a review that I personally could trust; here in Japan the traveller gets the best room, professionaly lit to highlight everything, eat off the top of the menu with the chef or owner hovering over the table, and get the one-on-one guided tour of the sites, declaring everything to be absolutely wonderful, including, no doubt, the brown envelopes filled with unmarked bills from the featured businesses. I know of no travel shows that make any attempt to appear genuine.
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goo Research recently published the results of a survey they conducted into people’s plans for holidays this year. Over five days in the middle of January 1,082 people from their online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire.

Demographics

The sample was 49.9% male, with 21.0% in their twenties, 18.8% in their thirties, 21.5% in their forties, 17.6% in their fifties, and 21.1% aged sixty or older. It’s good to see a large sample of older people, as I suspect that retired people travel disproportionately often.

I’m off to Europe too this summer, but I’m not sure what will happen regarding the blog; perhaps I’ll just stick it on autopilot summarising or reposting last year’s news? I have zero intention of blogging from abroad, and I doubt if I’ll even bother reading my mail. For domestic travel, I’d love to know how many people plan spending a night in their home prefecture. Wifey and I spend a night a few times a year in Kobe and Osaka (at a proper hotel, not the by-the-hour type!) for no particular reason other than we get a good offer, with both cities within 40 minutes travel time from home. In fact, last month we stayed at Hotel Piena in Kobe on a full board including five course room service deal with quite amazingly good food, especially considering they whipped up some veggie dishes for me at very short notice. We had a small complaint about noise from upstairs, and the manager sent me a nice letter of apology and three 20% off discount tickets!
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NEPROJAPAN recently published the results of a survey they conducted into how mobile phones have changed their lives. A similar survey was conducted last year. Respondents were solicited by means of an option through the menuing systems of the three main mobile phone service providers, namely DoCoMo’s iMode, SoftBank’s Yahoo! Keitai, and au’s EZweb over a two day period from the 8th to 9th of February.

Demographics

Of the 3,746 who successfully completed the survey, 56% were female, 3% in their teens, 36% in their twenties, 44% in their thirties, and 17% in their forties. Note that due to the self-selecting nature of the survey, heavy users of mobile phones will most likely be over-represented in the figures.

Recently, the one thing that I’ve started using much more, now that both my wife and I have a phone that supports it, is Deco-Mail, HTML mail for mobiles, which basically means lots and lots of animated GIFs in mail.
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Following Giganews picking up my emoticons translation, from the same article I learnt about a survey conducted by Nagase Beauty Care into the matter of working women and stress. The survey was conducted on the 16th and 17th of January by means of an internet-based questionnaire.

Demographics

500 women from all over the country working in public companies were interviewed, with 125 in their twenties, 125 in their thirties, 125 in their forties, and 125 in their fifties.

Not being a woman, I obviously cannot add my own opinions here!
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With horizontal rain hammering on the window right now, it may seem rather unseasonal to look at a recent survey published by infoPLANT on the subject of ice cream, but the market even in the off season for ice cream seems rather strong. Over a week in the middle of January 8,653 people, 66.6% female, self-selected themselves to complete a survey available through the menuing system of NTT DoCoMo’s iMode.

I eat ice cream perhaps two or three times a month, but most of that is either as a fixed dessert item on a dinner menu, or as a small scoop accompanying a slice of cake. During the summer, once every few weeks we’ll buy a cone, and when we go to the theatre we usually buy a single-serving cup during the interval, but that’s about it.

And what is the correct English term for a single-serving cup/mini-pot of ice cream? Cup ice cream sounds awfully like a Japanese-invented term. You know you’ve been in Japan too long when you forget British-English and can only remember Japanese-English!
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Recently, Macromill Inc. published the results of a survey into Saint Valentine’s Day. They interviewed 515 female company employees aged between 20 and 39 from their internet monitor group over two days towards the end of January this year. In the sample 57 women or 11.1% were aged between 20 and 24, 169 or 32.8% between 25 and 30, 182 or 35.3% between 30 and 34, and 107 or 20.8% between 35 and 39.

In Japan, Saint Valentine’s Day actually incorporates two different celebrations. Before I mention them, note that this day is just for women to give stuff to men; we get our chance next month, on White Day, the 14th of March. One celebration is, of course, the one we all know in the west, giving a present to your object of affection. The second is “male appreciation day”, where 義理チョコ, giri chocolates, are given to men, usually work colleagues, in theory given freely as an expression of thanks, but the word “giri” can be translated as “obligatory”, indicating that most female employees have to pay for chocolates for all the men in the office. Mari Kanazawa covers this issue today in her own inimitable style, as does Shari at My So-Called Japanese Life.

At work there’s quite a fair haul of goodies – there is the standard chocolates (Royce, from our company shop), then some Zunda beans Pretz (I think they are a Valentine gift anyway!), and a huge selection of hand-made cakes by one of my colleague’s wife, whose hobby is making cakes for us. I had a lovely cherry sponge, done to the quality (including the obligatory double-wrapping) of commercial cakes.
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Recently, japan.internet.com reported on a survey performed by JR Tokai Express Research looking at what people were drinking when they were on the net. 46.1% of the respondents were female, 23.9% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 26.7% in their forties, 4.8% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties.

In Q1, in the “Other” category, two people admitted to boozing at work… I drink black tea and mineral water at work, and filtered tap water at home.

I’ve had an idea for ages that a wonderful device for home PCs would be a “surf-a-lizer”, basically a breathaliser for your PC. You set it up (when sober, of course) to require you to breath into the bag before opening certain programs or accessing certain sites, stopping you sending embarrassing emails, mad online shopping sprees, or logging onto an online game only to get your character savaged by monsters in an attack of beer-fuddled bravado.
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