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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Continuing their recent series of interesting habits that people have around technology, japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing Inc, carried out an internet-based survey to see what email habits people had. They interviewed 300 people from up and down Japan, exactly fifty-fifty male and female, with 16.6% of the sample aged either 18 or 19, and a similar 16.6% aged in each of decades of life from the twenties to the sixties.

Just about all Japanese mobile phones come with graphic smilies (Vodafone even has animated ones, I believe), pre-registered set phrases that include smilies, and smilies in their input conversion dictionaries. For instance, if you type in かお, kao, face, then select the covert to kanji option, as well as the expected kanji 顔, most mobile phones will also present a list of smilies to choose from. Note that this option is also available in Windows – if you have the Japanese IME, select the properties page for the Japanese input method, go to the “Dictionary” tab, and activate the “Microsoft IME Spoken Language/Emoticon Dictionary”.

I do use smilies, or 顔文字, kaomoji, literally “face characters”, a lot in mail, although I usually use the built-in graphics rather than choosing ASCII (and non-ASCII, as is often the case) art. However, as a signature I occasionally do use the Greek characters κεπ.
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Following on from a recent survey regarding phone email handedness and voice earedness, japan.internet.com in conjunction with JR Tokai Express Research carried out a survey on which hand people usually use with their mouse. They surveyed 330 working people by means of an internet questionnaire. 76.7% of the sample was male, with 15.8% in their twenties, 45.8% in their thirties, 30.3% in their forties, 7.6% in their fifties, and just 0.6% (two people) over the age of sixty.

In the first question you may notice a rather high percentage of lefties who got converted to right-handedness. This treatment of sinister characters is not unique to Japan, but it does perhaps appear to be rather strong within schools, looking at the figures here. Also, since most of the survey here is in their thirties, we are only seeing a snapshot of schooling 20 years ago or so; searching the web reveals that there is an oft-quoted survey that says only 0.7% of Japanese schoolchildren are left-handed, but I could not discover details of what the original survey was or when it was conducted.

Q1: Are you left-handed or right-handed? (Sample size=330)

Originally left-handed, but school or parents “corrected” me	4.8%
Ambidextrous (to Q2)	2.1%
Always right-handed	87.0%
Always left-handed	6.1%

Q2: Currently, with which hand do you use your mouse? (Sample size=43, ambidextrous users)

Left hand	7%
Right hand	84%
Both hands (to Q3)	9%
Use other pointing device	0%

Q3: Do you know that by using the control panel or other software you can change a mouse to left-handed use? (Sample size=36, ambidextrous right-hand mousers)

Yes	39%
No	61%

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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I saw on CrissCross News (ex Japan Today) an article on a survey regarding Japanese and April Fools. Basically, it doesn’t seem very popular, with just 20% expressing a positive view of it. Almost two fifth of those who expressed a negative opinion said that their reason for disliking it was because “this kind of thing is difficult to understand in Japan” versus, for example, less a fifth taking the “bah, humbug” option. This “ware ware nihonjin” attitude (see section 9) is one of my pet annoyances in Japan! However, the main anecdote in the story:

“The driver of the bus I was riding announced there was a bomb on board. After everybody disembarked in a big panic, he exclaimed, ‘April Fool! Now wasn’t that fun?’ And all of the other passengers laughed!”

smells a bit fishy to me, and not of the Poisson D’Avril type.

In addition, Mari’s Diary also covered a few April Fools (and non-Fool) news items.

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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japan.internet.com, in conjection with JR Tokai Express Research, conducted a survey on the awareness of the Google brand in Japan. They interviewed by means of an internet-based survey 331 people, 70.4% male, all of whom worked in either the public or the private sector. 39.3% were in their twenties, 36.0% in their thirties, 23.9% in their forties, no-one in their fifties, and just 0.9% aged sixty or older. The sample was drawn from all over the country.

I’m not surprised at Blogger’s usage being so low, since I do not believe it has a Japanese interface, and anyway a previous survey has shown a preference for Japan-based blogging services. However, the large number of Google earth users really surprised me! Whether the respondents were confusing it with Google Maps, or if people just used it once or twice to find their house, I do not know.
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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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