世論 What Japan Thinks

Today I will present three ranking surveys for the price of one, all on the theme of water usage at home, all carried out by DIMSDRIVE Research as part of their 85th Ranking Survey over the period of about a week at the end of June and start of July. First is using water for drinking at home, next is water for tea and coffee at home, and finally water for cooking at home.

Japan’s tap water is basically safe, but in the big cities it tends to smell a bit due to the various treatments it undergoes. Most restaurants, for example, serve water that at least has been through some sort of treatment, but what exactly they use in their tea is anyone’s guess. At home, we have a built-in water purifier that we use for drinking and tea and coffee, except for when making a large pot of tea (usually 麦茶, mugicha, barley tea) for refrigerating, when we use plain old tap water. The exact reason for this is beyond me. Our previous flat had some nasty black spots (tar or pitch, perhaps) that occasionally flaked off making filtration absolutely necessary.
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One of the foods that gaijin don’t eat is, of course, natto, which as any visitor or resident to these shores will tell you is one of the stock food questions to foreigners, “Can you eat natto?”, along with “Can you eat Japanese raw fish?” and “Can you eat anko?” I myself love anko, but natto… Interestingly enough, natto is mostly a Tokyo or Northern Japan delicacy; many (I think the majority, if I could find a survey!) of people from the Kansai area turn their noses up at it, including, thankfully, my wife, although she finds many other unpalatable items to make up for it! I’ve tried it once in a cooked dish and managed to get through about a third of it before giving up.

So, goo Ranking took a wee look at what people put on top of their natto. goo Ranking offer now a service to cut and paste their original survey into your blog, so I’ll add that for those who want to see the original results. I’ll also add an English translation, of course! As usual for goo Rankings, 100 points is awarded for the top vote-getter, and the rest awarded a percentage representing how many votes they got relative to the winner. “Nothing” was perhaps not one of the answers allowed.

If the following table completely destroys your browser, sorry…
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“What!”, I hear you cry, “aren’t all Buddhist priests supposed to be vegetarians?” The key word is of course supposed. The original Buddha, Shakyamuni, apparently was not, as is popularly believed, vegetarian, but instead just forbade people who would offer him food from killing an animal on his behalf. If he visited a family with a mutton curry in the pot, he would eat it if offered, or so it is recorded.

However, the various schools have adopted their own particular set of rules for their monks and priests, and most do (presumably) prescribe a vegetarian diet. And no alcohol of course.

Bearing this in mind, Triva no Izumi (Fount of Trivia) decided to ask 100 meat-eating priests what their favourite kind of 焼肉, yakiniku, grilled meat, beef in particular, was. What percentage of the total number of priests asked admitted to meat-eating is sadly not recorded. I have also previously translated another survey on the general population’s favourite grilled meat.
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Here’s a nice wee summer-tinged survey from goo Ranking: in mid-May by means of presumably an open poll on their web site they asked an indeterminate number of people to choose everyday soothing sounds. As usual with goo Ranking results, the top choice scores 100, and all others rank as a percentage of the top choice.

Having recently bought a flat with a garden, and with the mating season in full swing, I can well agree with the sound of birds being tops. I’m surprised, though, that the cicada figured so low, as it is a sound very typically associated with the Japanese summer. Perhaps they are just too loud, or are usually only heard in the torrid heat of midsummer to be considered soothing? I’d also have voted for the evening insects that herald the onset of Autumn. Round about the end of August the evening chorus changes from a harsh staccato to a soft, almost melodic, chirp. Perhaps that is the crickets at number six? Of course, in a British survey, the cricket sound would be that of leather off willow.
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With Japan due back from Germany tomorrow morning (no, I have no confidence in them being able to beat Brazil by two clear goals), let’s look at a recent ranking survey by DIMSDRIVE Research on what people would like to see a World Cup of. They interviewed 4,597 members of their internet monitor group, with 2,383, or 51.8%, male.

Note that many of the sports mentioned already have world championships, so perhaps people mean they want to see coverage of these events, or they are ignorant of their existence, as I was too until I started searching. The links you see below go to existing world championships or world federations of the sports mentioned, or just news of such events.

Note also that the top three involve food either directly or indirectly.
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DISMDRIVE Research released their 81st Ranking Research results, and one of these was a look at what folklore or superstitions people worry about. 4,597 people replied with the single (I think) superstition that they pay most attention to. 2,383 of the respondents, or 51.8%, were male.

This is a fun one for me, as the folk traditions here are often very different from home; I have never heard here of walking under a ladder being unlucky (probably because all ladders get coned off and have two guys waving batons to steer you round the obstacle), urinating on a bee sting seems a very popular (but totally ineffective) antidote, and PET bottles lined up outside houses to scare off cats don’t work.

Note that effect of black cats crossing your path is…umm, I’m not sure any more! Back home in Scotland it was good luck (I think – my memory’s going!) but in Japan it’s bad luck, according to this survey. I remember the Tom and Jerry cartoons where they’d have a black cat causing bad luck, so perhaps that’s the American belief. This random web page says that Japan is good luck, so I am now totally confused!
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In their 72nd Ranking Research questionnaire, DIMSDRIVE Research took a look at what Japanese people said they did before they went to sleep. They interviewed 5,298 people from their internet monitor group, 50.3% male, about their habits at the end of March this year.

You will notice that no-one mentions interacting with one’s partner, even just a cuddle or a chat, as what they do when they can’t sleep. Whether this is an uncommon practice or if this and more saucy answers were weeded out, I do not know.
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My Voice recently performed a survey to see that the members of their internet community thought about airlines and their image. They interviewed 15,121 people via a private internet-based questionnaire. The group was 46% male, with 3% teenagers, 22% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

Perhaps slightly suprisingly the local carriers come out on top, despite both ANA and JAL reporting high-profile problems with some of their fleet. I like Lufthansa myself, and Northwest’s food is awful and the staff scary soccer moms!
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With the Golden Week holidays coming up fast in Japan, goo Ranking published the results of a survey on how long a holiday their regular readers were taking. As with most of the goo Rankings, sex and age demographics are not available; as I understand it the votes were though a presumably anonymous web poll. In the results, the top vote score 100 points, with the relative number of votes for the options expressed as percentage points, I believe.

Golden Week refers to the sequence of holidays at the start of May in Japan; the first holiday, みどりの日, midori no hi, Greenery Day is in fact on the 29th of April but it usually doesn’t technically count as part of Golden Week (don’t ask why!). This day used to be the previous Emporer’s Birthday Holiday, 天皇誕生日, tenno tanjobi, a national holiday (the current one is on the 23rd of December), so when the previous Emperor Showa died, they decided to keep the day as a holiday, so they renamed it to Greenery Day.

Returning to the main topic, the three main holidays start on the 3rd of May with 憲法記念日, kenpo ki’nenbi, Constitution Memorial Day, followed by 国民の休日, kokumin no kyujitsu, National People’s Day on the 4th, then こどもの日, kodomo no hi, Children’s Day on the 5th. In my case, work is shut down for the whole week, plus I’ve booked this Friday off as a personal holiday, so I have ten days off. Note that this means that my posting frequency might decrease next week.
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Here’s my first ranking survey from goo Ranking, one on last month’s most popular disease name (or disease-related) search keywords. Regular readers will be familiar with goo Research, in my opinion the highest quality research company whose output I translate, but here goo Ranking’s data comes in this case from their own search engine’s statistics, or in other cases from public web polls, so the figures should be taken with a pinch of salt. Regardless, they still provide an interesting snapshot of the typical goo user.
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