世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing, conducted an internet-based survey amongst 300 internet users, 50.3% female, to see what internet habits they had. 16.7% of the sample was aged 18 or 19, and 16.6% were from each of the other decades of life from the twenties to the sixties. I’m not sure how exactly work computers are suppposed to figure in this survey.

I think the results on SNS usage are particularly interesting – I’ve felt to some degree that SNSs are basically a more private form of blogging, so I’d love to see a more detailed survey on why people participate in SNS, or write blogs for that matter!

Personally, on the whole I switch on my home PC in the late evening (say past 9pm or so), and with this blog requiring rather a lot of work, I have little time for other activities bar mail.
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Continuing my recent alcohol theme, and to get all seasonal, this time MyVoice looked at what people thought about 梅酒, umeshu, or Plum Wine. 15,579 members of their MyVoice Community, 54% female, completed their internet-based questionnaire at the start of March. In the sample there were 23% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

For me, umeshu is just too sweet and has an artificial flavour, even in those brands that are 100% natural ingredients. Although the adverts for it are almost exclusively female-oriented, I am surprised that less than a quarter identified it as a feminine drink. Almost two in five chose it as a health drink, which is not really surprising as a lot of people hear a snippet of health news (or even quackery) and take it to heart; for instance, one famous actor recently admitted to drinking over two bottles of red wine a day, and another model quaffed about 18 cups of coffee, both convinced that since both these substances in moderation have certain benefits, one cannot take too much of them.
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infoPLANT recently released a survey, performed using their usual method of a menu option within the DoCoMo iMode service, to find out what people thought about beer, happoshu and third-sector beer. Note that this survey was self-selecting, but since it has nothing to do with mobile phones, there should not be too major a problem with the survey population this time. 7,668 people, 61.0% female, responded to the survey, conducted over one week at the end of February.

Beer almost always means lager in Japan, happoshu is a low-malt beer-like drink(can’t stand the stuff myself), and third-sector beer is wheat and malt free, and instead is made from pea and other vegetable proteins and the one time I drunk it it tasted suprisingly nice and smooth.

I think I have found one statistic I’ve been seeking for a long time – here we have 13.8% of men in their twenties reporting daily beer consumption. Looking at a table from my homeland of Scotland, we can see that in 1998 only 7% of males aged 25 to 34 drunk any alcohol daily. However, looking at those men who drink at least once a week, the Scots have a significantly higher figure, although remember that includes all alcohol types. Similarly, but even more markedly, a mere 3% of young Scotswomen drink any alcohol daily, whereas over three times as many, 10.1% of Japanese women in their twenties consume beer daily. These differences are repeated across all the age groups.

Contrasting the daily figures with the weekly ones, I think it is a fair conclusion to draw that whilst the Japanese may overall have a lower frequency of alcohol consumption than the Scots, there are a higher number of regular drinkers amongst the Japanese population.

Note that neither survey addresses the volume of consumption, but with the recommended maximum weekly intake of 21 units for men and 14 for women, two large half-litre cans for men or two small 330 ml cans for women of beer-like drinks will most likely put the daily drinkers over the safe limit, and that ignores any other alcohol the Japanese may be consuming. Taking the adult population of Japan to be about 103 million and taking 18.6% of that figure we get the tabloid headline figure above, which does make certain assumptions, of course, some that might make the figure lower and others that make it higher.
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Dentsu Inc recently carried out a survey (their “Trendbox Research”, to use the brand name) to find out what people thought about their brains. At the start of January they interviewed 400 people from up and down the country. Exactly half and half of the respondents were male and female, and 100 people were in each decade of life from the twenties to the fifties.

Brain training is rather a hot topic in Japan today; products on sale range from books of simple arithmetic or simple kanji to read out loud, to the Nintendo DS Brain Training game series, to which I actually contributed a very, very small part!

Oh, and here’s a bit of brain training I learnt about on TV a couple of weekends ago for getting rid of some chronic fatigue. The idea is that you need to stimulate your frontal lobes before going to bed, as increased activity there results in more cortisone and serotonin, which gets your body recharged quicker, or something like that. So, in addition to taking in sufficient B complex vitamins and calcium, before you go to sleep press your temples as you slowely breath out, then release as you breath in. Repeat ten times, then just before you sleep picture someone’s face – it works best if it is someone you dislike, apparently, but make sure you don’t dislike them too much and stress yourself out!
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MyVoice surveyed the members of its MyVoice community at the start of March to find out what they thought regarding bath time. 15,895 people responded to the internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, with 4% in their teens, 23% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 23% in their forties, and 12% aged fifty or over.

Modern Japanese bathrooms are very automated these days – the standard for most new developments is to have a tap-free automaticaly filling bath, with temperature maintenance and fitted air conditioner. My dwelling, for instance, has one push to start the tub going, then it will maintain the temperature until we are ready to enter. The bathroom itself has a four-way air conditioner – heat, cool, dehumidify, and heat plus dehumidifying for drying clothes.

Note also that many homes have the bathroom as a separate room from the toilet or wash hand basin, so there is no need for a shower curtain as the whole room is waterproof.
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MyVoice surveyed 16,108 members of its monitor community, 54% female, by means of an internet-based survey to find out what they thought about credit cards. The sample consisted of 4% in their teens, 23% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 11% in their fifties.

As well as the bog-standard corporate coloured card, most credit cards you get in Japan also have a cartoon character option. My main card (Asahi-branded (the ex-bank, not the beer) Sumitomo Mitsui Visa) features Miffy, which always gets funny looks when I use it abroad. At Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, I once asked for a discount when buying a Miffy cuddly toy with it. My other main card is a boring old gold one, though. I once had an idea for a money-making scheme – sign up for credit cards and bank accounts, get all the character goods, cancel the account and sell the stuff on eBay.
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MyVoice carried out another of their quirky surveys at the start of March, asking 15,608 members of their MyVoice internet community about their blissful alcohol moments. 46% of the respondents to their internet questionnaire were male, with 24% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

The average Japanese person’s moment of alcoholic bliss is a standard beer whilst eating a meal with the spouse in the living room.

My all too rare, sadly, moments of bliss with alcohol are a cool evening sitting with wifey outside a European bar or cafe sipping a cool continental lager or weissbier.

Oh, and this is my 200th post – if I had some beer in the house I’d raise a glass in celebration!
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at the perception of online DVD rental. They interviewed 1,061 people from their monitor group at the start of March by means of an internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 43.3% male, with 25.0% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 24.5% in their forties, and 9.0% in their fifties.

I haven’t rented a DVD since I got married, although perhaps before I did I might have investigated one of these companies, as I heard a bit about NetFlix from USA residents, and my local Tsutaya had a pretty thin collection of DVDs. Now, I don’t have enough time to even just catch up with what we record off cable! However, if I could find a cheap portable player – about Nintendo DS size with one face all screen, and an SD memory card slot – I’d snap one up in an instant for viewing on the train. The PSP and its UMD just look a bit too bulky and perhaps battery-hungry for my needs. I’d love to catch up on Monkey, both the original and the new versions, for instance.
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

I see that I attracted a few readers in a LiveJournal kimono forum, so rather than creating a LiveJournal account to reply privately to their questions, I’ll post an update here with some more detailed statistics from the same report that I translated earlier this week.

One other question they had was from the final question about the kimono’s image, as to what “Japaneseness” was. This was my translation of 日本人らしい, nihonjinrashii, which translates more literally to “looking like a Japanese person”.

On a personal note, getting picked up by these kimono wearers (as it were) is the sort of thing that makes me feel all this blogging is worthwhile. I’ve learnt about western kimono fans and they’ve learnt a bit more about how the Japanese view what is their hobby. If there are any readers out there with a pet subject that they’d like to hear more about, please don’t hesitate to ask me and I’ll see what I can find. I’m fascinated by Japanese bowel movements (yes, honestly, but not in that way) or the lack thereof, but I’m yet to find a good survey regarding it.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with a new-to-me company Cross Marketing Inc (ugh, Flash-based survey reports!), performed a survey of 300 mobile phone users (exactly 50:50 male and female) at the start of this month to find out what habits they had regarding mobile phones. 17.3% of the respondents were in their teens (in fact, aged 18 or 19 only), and each of the four decades of age from twenties to fifties were represented by 20.7% of the sample size.

I previously presented another survey that looked at the use of extra features of a mobile phone, but the percentages are quite different between the two. More investigation may be needed to discover why this discrepency has occured, although I wonder if the sample selection method is the problem. The earlier survey was a self-selecting one that would tend to attract heavy users, I suspect, but for this one, although the respondent selection method is not described, given the small survey size and the balanced age grouping, I suspect there is a much more rigourous selection process.
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