世論 What Japan Thinks

UPDATE: This diet does not work!

I’m sadly unable to find any surveys related to the biggest buzz on the English-language internet last week, the release of Apple’s iPhone, so instead I’ll report on goo Ranking’s look at the biggest buzz on Japanese web sites, namely what keywords people are using in goo’s search engine to look for natto. The data was collected between the 7th and 16th of January 2007, or Heisei 19 in the Japanese calendar, thus the title.

Natto is fermented soya beans, and if you search YouTube for natto you can see rather a lot of foreigners (and one cat) trying to eat it. (link flood coming up!) The shortage of natto has been widely blogged about, and was sparked by Aruaru Daijiten, a popular health (and quackery) show, who in their first show of the New Year introduced the natto diet, which is basically one pack of natto before breakfast and evening meals, then eat just as much as you normally do, assuming the natto hasn’t put you off your food altogether! The most beneficial way to eat natto is to stir it at least 50 times then leave it to stand at room temperature for 15 minutes. It’s something to do with assisting the production of DHEA to increase your metabolic rate, apparently.

In other related news, World Net Daily (I can’t believe I’m linking to that rag!) reported how soy beans turn you gay; natto may be one of the most potent soy bean products, if this video is to be believed! (Note – not really recommended for viewing at work, and probably highly offensive to the typical World Net Daily reader)
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In addition to the the question posed in the headline, I’d like to ask my Tokyo-based readers if your Japanese friends have tried taking you there, and what did they want to take you to there?

I discovered today another new-to-me web site, but this time it’s of a rather prominent research company, Macromill Inc. They’ve got some interesting opinion poll results on their site, but one that caught my eye was this one on the image of the towns within Tokyo. Over one day at the end of September last year they interviewed 1,032 people from their online monitor group, evenly split 516 male and 516 female, and each sex also evenly split with 129 people in each age band from between 20 and 29, 30 to 39, 40 to 49, and 50 years or older.

This is a slightly old survey, and since I am not a Tokyo expert by any long shot, I’ll skip a full translation (although give me a shout if you would like to see more!) and instead focus on the most relevant portion for my readers, a couple of images related to foreigners. Note that although the Japanese word 外国人, gaikokujin, means anyone from overseas, it is usually taken as referring to non-Asian foreigners. (Is it? I and many other English-speaking foreigners often assert this, but is there any evidence to support or disprove this supposition?)

Also note that Q1 specifically mentions foreigner friends, so it is presumably not just where they would recommend the average tourist should go. On the other hand, the respondent may be thinking of a friend from abroad coming to Tokyo for the first time, so perhaps it is the tourist spots that they are thinking of?
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goo Rankings (forgive me publishing yet another goo Ranking!) published a summary of the top-linked sites from their blog service.

Since this is not a survey, there’s obviously no demographic information, instead it had been generated from looking at all the outgoing links from all the blog entries posted during the month of December.
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DIMSDRIVE Ranking recently published as part of their 106th ranking survey what award people would like to win. 5,086 people were asked what they thought over five days at the start of December 2006. Note that some of the awards are made-up.

For some reason Japan sticks “-ist” on the end of many of these awards, such as the Best Jeanist mentioned in the headline. Perhaps if Alfred Nobel had been born Japanese, rather than lend his name to those prizes, he might very well have named them “Best Brainist”. Or perhaps not.

In sort-of related news, Tokyo Times covers the recent Best Pearl Dresser award in its own inimitable style.
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In one of these strange and totally unscientific surveys that goo Rankings rather often conducts, we find out who the Japanese consider to be a model international couple. That is “model” as in “role model”, not “fashion model”. There is no demographic or other information for this poll, except that it was conducted over three days towards the end of November.

I believe the gist of the original Japanese question is after which international couple’s example would they like to model their relationship. One wonders about the thought processes that went on in the selection of two other-kind-of-model brides.

You may also note that all bar one seems to be a marriage with a white foreigner.

UPDATE: Following feedback from Roy, I’ve promoted (demoted?) Kumiko Goto to just “model”.
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The above phrase may often be heard throughout Western homes a couple of days into the New Year as everyone has had their fill of left-over turkey, but what about in Japan? goo Ranking decided to find out what people fancied eating when they got fed up with お節, osechi, the traditional Japanese New Year cuisine. As usual, there’s no demographic information, and the survey was unseasonably carried out at the end of November.

This site described the posh shop-bought osechi, but most often it is home-made, and in our case consists of miso soup with mizuna and mochi. I fortunately managed to break the monotony with a 10-pack of Mister Donuts (twice!), but I could fair go a pizza myself!
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Just in time before deciding on New Year Resolutions, goo Ranking published the results of a quick survey they conducted in November into people’s unfinished business for the year. As usual, no demographics or other detailed numbers, just a rank of the percentage of the winning votes total.
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DIMSDRIVE Research recently published as part of their 103rd Ranking Research the results of a questionnaire to discover what people envied about the opposite sex. Over a week in mid-November 2,373 men and 2,334 women from their monitor group supplied their answers.

This appears to be just a fun, perhaps even silly, question, but when you look at the answers you see a lot of honest, even bitter, opinions on how people view the opposite sex. It’s also interesting how women envy men because men don’t need to do the things the men envy in women. (I don’t think that makes much sense…)
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As part of their 104th Ranking Research, DIMSDRIVE Research asked 5,003 members of its monitor group why it was good that they were born Japanese. This poll was conducted towards the end of November.

When I first read this I laughed out loud at the item ranked second, and I think everyone else who has lived in Japan will raise at least a wry smile when they see probably the most groan-worthy stereotypical nihonjinron-like answer.

If I had to choose the top reasons why I’m happy that I was born Scottish, I’d probably choose the Scottish socialistic (with a small ‘s’) character, the great outdoors, our football team that can inspire both laughter and tears, something to do with our culture and heritage, and, of course, that I wasn’t born English.
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Another word of the year list for your entertainment, this time as selected by the editors of (or contributors to?) the annual magazine 知恵蔵, chiezou, Store of Wisdom, a publication that covers the theme of current language matters.
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