世論 What Japan Thinks

In another silly wee goo Ranking report, people chose their most entertaining Christmas-themed movie. As always, the ranking is the relative votes for each movie, and no demographic information is available. The survey was conducted towards the end of November.

For most Americans, as I understand it, Miracle on 34th Street is the Christmas movie, although I cannot say I know it at all. For me, I cannot honestly recall any particular Xmas-themed movie – a film version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (Scrooge below) is about the only thing that comes to mind, but even then, I can only really remember the Blackadder version. In the UK, the tradition is more Wizard of Oz in the morning, and a Bond movie after the Xmas pud and the Queen.

Some of the titles also seem to have very tenuous links to Christmas.
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goo Ranking recently published the results of a ranking opinion poll into what Disney (including Pixar) animation they can enjoy as an adult, for both male and female. As usual for goo Ranking, just the relative votes for each title is listed.

The two big surprises for me are that the Jungle Book is nowhere in the rankings and that Pixar’s films are rather low in the charts. Perhaps Pixar has too many Western references in its cartoons, or perhaps it loses a lot of the subtelties in translation?
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As we get towards the end of the year, everyone is coming out with rankings. This time it’s Mitsui Sumitomo Bank’s consulting group presenting their picks in the form of sumo ranking, and since Mari has already translated the story over in her diary, please pay her a visit through the link above!

Perhaps at the end of the season I should do a summary league table of the biggest big things according to all the various sources. I’ve also noticed that the magazine ダカーポ, Da Capo, this week has a cover story about the top people, things, booms and incidents of the year. I should invest the 320 yen in order to bring you all some more interesting material.

With most train lines stopping around 12 midnight and not resuming until 5 am, there is always the danger of getting one over the eight and missing the last train. So, with this in mind, goo Ranking published the results of a survey conducted towards the end of October into what people did if they had to wait for the first train home. As usual for goo Rankings, there is no demographic information, and scores are the percentages of the top ranking choice.

Note that getting a taxi home is usually an infeasible option as taxis are horrendously expensive once you get past a few kilometres. Also note that family resturants tend to have all-you-can-drink soft drink options, so it is easy to hole up all night nursing a bottomless cup of coffee. The times I’ve missed (sometimes on purpose!) the last train home I’ve ended up in a karaoke box or even walking home, even though it was a good ten kilometres or so!
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On the first of December Japan’s biggest correspondence course company, U-CAN, and Jiyu Kokumin Sha (a book publishing company) released the results of a survey into the top words or expressions to come into vogue this year. The voting was conducted, I believe, by means of a public web poll though both of their web sites, but no demographic information is available. On the web site linked above you can find all sixty candidate words that the winners were selected from.

The handkerchief prince meme became one of the most irritating ones for me; it seemed that almost ever comedian picked up on it, and the merest dab of their foreheads with a blue hanky was enough to send the studio audience into paroxisms of mirth.

Regarding Metabolic Syndrome or middle-age spread, and to stray rather far away from the topic, I had an intersting discussion at work this afternoon regarding the best way to tackle this issue. This year’s winter bonus seems to have been spent in one of two ways; first, on the Panasonic Joba, a decidedly non-bucking bronco for your living room. One colleague recounted a story how one of the old guys in her English class is a cowboy freak, so at home indulges in cosplay by dressing up in a cowboy outfit, saddling up and watching John Wayne movies. As a result, his English is rather advanced but contains many expressions that died in the Wild West. Second, the Wii. Quite a lot of people old enough to know better queued overnight for the release and spent the weekend working out to Wii Sports.
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UPDATE: I have now translated the results of the Kanji of the Year 2006 survey.

Continuing with the words of the year theme, I’ve had a couple of people searching for this, so I had a quick look up on the web, and I found this page (in Japanese, of course) that describes how to enter – the deadline is the 13th of December. Note that as there is a prize draw, and to prevent multiple entries, you need to register for an account before voting for your character for this year. My bets for this year are either 美, the kanji from 美しい, utsukushii, beautiful, from Prime Minister Abe’s catch-phrase, “Towards a beautiful Japan”, or 格, kaku, which means status or character, and features in popular phrases such as 品格 and 格差, hinkaku and kakusa, dignity and disparity. As for my actual vote, I haven’t decided yet.

The results are announced sometime around the New Year at Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto.

Following my recent 100 top goo Japan search keywords of the year translation(with the top 10 covered in detail over at Recognize Design), we now have the top 50 words looked up in goo’s English to Japanese dictionary in the first 10 months of the year. As with the search terms, one suspects that the four-letter words have been filtered out. This time there is no score for each of the keywords to reflect their frequency.

I don’t know why vomit sneaked in at the bottom, and redundance seems a bit odd, but redundancy also maps to the same definition when looked up.

I also thought it was quite funny seeing bear in 30th place as I do get an occasional search like “how to say bear in Japanese”. Oh, it’s 熊, くま, kuma, just in case you are here actually searching for bear in Japanese. That’s the Japanese for the animal kind of bear, anyway.
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Here’s a silly wee survey from goo Ranking on ___-only carriages on trains. The fieldwork was carried out over four days towards the end of October by means of a public poll, so no demographics are available. The scores in the survey represent the percentage of the top vote-getter that each option got.

Note that the Japanese term, ○○専門, maru-maru senmon, perhaps translates better as “specifically for whatever“, even though the most familiar form, 女性専門, josei senmon, is usually translated as “women only”. I’ll stick with “only” in the table, even though some may make more sense as “specifically for”.

I suspect that many of the votes were for enforcing segregation, such as for keeping the drunks or overly-perfumed (or even screaming kids…) away from the normal people. My vindictive vote would be for a bad breath-only car, but given the vapours in the average morning rush train, perhaps three-quarters of the carriages would need to be dedicated to those whose oral health was lacking.

In position number 7, strong heating or cooling, is perhaps in response to many lines having in summer a “cool” car, with the air conditioning set a couple of degrees higher. However, in my experience the default temperatures are far too strong, so I can only imagine that people are wanting a sauna or ice blocks!

I have previously translated a more serious look at women-only trains.
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Mari’s Diary covered a survey by ranking Japan on men’s bad habits that put women right off them. I must admit to being a big girl’s blouse with cockroaches, my desktop is covered in figurines, my parking is rather so-so although my excuse is that I don’t drive regularly, I sometimes play mobile phone games in the train, my wallet’s stuffed with point cards, I use lots of emoticons in my mobile phone mail, my writing is terrible even in English, and sometimes my keypressing gets a bit loud. Sigh, 9 out of 19!

Let’s spend a romantic moment or two together looking at a survey from goo Ranking conducted back towards the end of September into what pair of items unmarried couples would want to go shopping for with their lover, for both women and men. You hopefully know all about the lack of demographics and how the scoring works already.

As for me, maybe I’m just a tight-fisted git, but I always enjoy buying mobile straps together. Currently my phone features the following pair items: one 50th anniversary Miffy (actually, her brown dog), three Tottoros in a chain, one Hello Kitty Kobe Airport opening memorial Jumbo Kitty, and one Hello Kitty Kobe Weather-Cock House Weather Kitty Cock.
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