世論 What Japan Thinks

In January, DIMSDRIVE Research interviewed by means of an internet-based questionnaire 1,454 people, 59.2% male, to find out what people do to get rid of a hangover. The Japanese for hangover is 二日酔い, futsukayoi, “two days drunk”, which I think is a wonderfully descriptive term!

I find the whole subject of Japan and drink fascinating, and whilst I’m still to find the one survey that confirms my suspicion that whilst overall alcohol consumption in Japan may be lower than in the West, there are comparable, if not higher, figures for regular drinkers, and more worryingly, regular heavy drinkers. Alcohol abuse is still not recognised here as a societal problem; I’m not some sort of Puritan calling for prohibition, of course, just someone who wishes booze was taken seriously.

As a small anecdote, in one of our company magazines we got a depression checklist, and one of the signs was not wishing to join in with office drinking sessions; for me, these events cause me stress, and paying 4,000 to 5,000 yen to sit in a usually very smokey pub for two hours as people continute to talk shop all around whilst making do with a veggie option that is a poor excuse for a meal is not really my idea of fun; I’d rather be snuggling up with wifey under the kotatsu watching the telly at home!
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DIMSDRIVE Research recently published the results of one of their ranking surveys, carried out in the middle of January amongst 5,782 members of their internet monitor group, 2,752 male, 3,030 female, to find out what kind of cat they’d like to keep as a pet.

This is a great excuse to publish a photo of the top-ranked and third-ranked breeds, Aria and Andy respectively, captured in a rare moment when they weren’t knocking lumps out of each other or aggravating my allergy with their hair!

The number who don’t want to keep cats is not recorded. Note that a Japanese cat most likely mean a mixed breed with a stubby tail, the most common wild and semi-wild cats you see around the streets here.
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In my quest to bring you the rather more obscure and slighly weird surveys of Japanese public opinion, here comes an odd report from DIMSDRIVE Research, who asked 4,551 Japanese of all ages what their favourite meat on a yakiniku (grilled meat) menu was. 44.7% of those who replied to their internet-based questionnaire were male. This survey was carried out last July.

As a vegetarian myself, I have to go for the “None of the above” option. I also must resist saying anything about the fact that so many young Japanese women seem to love nothing more than a bit of tongue. Oh, and if you too want to get away from meat and get some decent tofu and other soy-based foodstuffs, and live in the Kansai area, I hearily recommend “Mame no Hatake” and “Seed’s Kitchen” as semi-organic, semi-veggie eateries. The “Mame no Hatake” buffet, in particular, is quite amazing value, 1,900 yen for a high-quality all-you-can-eat buffet.
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MyVoice carried out a survey of its community at the start of this month to see what they thought about self-service (counter service only) coffee shops. 16,311 people, 46% male, completed their internet questionnaire. 3% were teenagers, 24% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% fifty years old or over.

Japan is apparently the only country in the world (sorry, I can’t find a definite statement of the statistics) where the Coca-Cola Company make more money (or sell more by volume, or something) with a drink other than their signature fizzy brown bevarage, namely their line of Georgia canned coffee, which are, on the whole, either over-sugary, over-milky (a friend got kidney stones from drinking six or eight cans a day and hardly any other liquids, bar beer) or over-bitter for my taste.

Also note that in Japan there is little tradition of carrying out a cup of coffee from a shop. Even around Starbucks, almost no-one will drink their coffee anywhere bar the shop; I personally can only recall one time seeing a Japanese person carrying a coffee cup onto a train, for instance.

Finally, most coffee shops are still smoking. Starbucks is non-smoking throughout (except for seating outside, if available), but other chains often have perhaps only have a quarter or less reserved for non-smokers, and little effective segregation. However, note the last question, about why people like their particular favourite chain – only 9.5% choose smoking segregation (all non-smoking was not an option) as a plus, at most just a fifth of the Starbucks fans, versus 9% who choose that smoking is allowed, which is again just about a fifth of those with a favourite other than Starbucks.

I seem to have written far too much about Starbucks already! I’m much more a tea and table service man myself.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, carried out another of their short surveys, this time regarding what first sprung to mind when thinking about web services. They interviewed 1,036 people, 57.9% female, by means of an internet questionnaire. 2.7% of the respondents were teenagers, 23.0% were in their twenties, 42.3% in their thirties, 22.7% in their forties, 7.3% in their fifties, and 2.0% in their sixties.

Whereas an earlier survey looked at primarily how brand image is conveyed via advertising, these web services are perhaps not sold as heavily through conventional advertising channels, but instead make their mark by some combination of word of mouth, familiarity and accessibility.

The mere one percent naming Gmail as the first mail provider to come to mind seems very surprising to me, although I wonder if Google has been targetting that service towards the English-speaking demographic at the expensive of foreign language speakers? How does the Gmail brand image rank in other countries, including at home in the USA? Does anyone know?

One nice thing, however, about Gmail being below the Japanese radar is that our office’s firewall does not block it (yet…), unlike Hotmail, Yahoo! web mail (Japan but not the UK) and the other big providers. Not that I check personal mail at work; no no no, not me at all.

In addition, Gmail is still invitation-only, but that hasn’t stopped SNS services spreading widely amongst the Japanese. By the way, if anyone out there would like a Gmail invitation, I have lots to give away!
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I just noticed an interesting article on Mutant Frog regarding the top-ranked Japanese and US blogs. Worth checking out for a wee bit more background about what’s hot in the Japan blog world. And, of course, I have a few blog surveys available, and I should have another interesting (to me, anyway!) one translated this week.

japan.internet.com and goo Research recently performed a survey to see what brands sprung to mind when various products were mentioned. They questioned 1,084 people from goo’s pool of monitors, 42.53% male, 57.47% female, with 66.14% aged from 10 (well, it’s actually from 15, as that’s the minimum age for joining the goo Research monitor group) to 39, and 33.86% aged from 40 to 69.

As a slight digression, the original story did have these percentages to two decimal places, which seems an unnecessarily high degree of accuracy. Since the sample size is 1,084 people, one person equates to just over 0.09% of the sample, therefore quoting the percentages to two decimal places implies more accuracy than is possible from the sample size.

As a second slight digression, I’ve been a bit disappointed by goo Research recently – their main research results index now mostly points to japan.internet.com stories which only report a handful of the highlights from their survey, rather than the full gory details. Perhaps for you as a reader the short sharp story is easier to digest, but for me, often the juicer statistics are glossed over.

Note that this questionnaire is related to brand awareness, not actual sales figures, which often differ quite greatly from the numbers presented below; Matsushita/Viera is number one in terms of sales of flat screen TVs in Japan, USA and Europe, for instance.
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In December, DIMSDRIVE Research interviewed 5,000 people, 2,457 male, from their internet monitor group about their views on the top e-business news stories of 2005. The age demographics were 1.4% in their teens, 15.6% in their twenties, 34.3% in their thirties, 28.7% in their forties, 13.3% in their fifties, and 6.7% aged sixty or over.

I find it interesting that the women rated IT firms buying baseball teams more highly than the men, as baseball does tend to have a more male image. I personally would have rated spyware and phishing more highly, but I don’t the the subject has got as much coverage in the Japanese press as it gets in the west.

I don’t think I need a crystal ball to predict what the biggest story of 2006 will be.
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DIMSDRIVE Research asked 4,205 people, 2,129 of them male, to name a great company founder or proprietor, in an internet-based survey carried out at the start of October last year.

Note the date that this was taken. It was before the problem with the Matsushita Fan Heaters cropped up, and before Takafumi Horie found himself in hot water regarding some share dealing. Since this second story is currently under criminal investigation, I will refain from comment, although I do note that there seems to be some element of the population that back Horiemon, and in fact some are suggesting that he will emerge from this scandal stronger, not weaker.

Regarding the Matsushita problem, however, I felt their response was very thorough, especially compared to the recent problems with Mitsubishi truck wheels falling off, and if anything too thorough, as for a month they pulled all their TV advertising and replaced them with simple information spots about the product recall, manned almost every kerosene stand with employees to ask purchasers if they have a National Fan Heater, and had leaflets distributed with everyone’s gas bill.

Why Japan has so many paraffin heaters is another matter altogether; even in my brand new block of flats with the almost unheard of luxury of double or bonded pair glazing on all windows and underfloor heating, the people directly above us own one. Thank goodness our place is also kitted out with a full complement of smoke detectors!
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Last September, DIMSDRIVE Research questioned 13,855 people, 6,102 male, by means of an internet-based survey about what their least favourite souvenir from overseas was.

The whole business of buying おみやげ, omiyage after trips, whether they be to abroad or to domestic locations, is a horrendously expensive process, often involving buying absolute tat for friends and expensive gifts for those you may respect, of feel obliged by society to respect. My wife, for instance, always has to buy her dentist (who is, in my opinion, at least mildly incompetent) some decent wine or the like; for me personally, receiving a gift is a very impersonal act, as I know from my own experience that the person offering the gift just rushed round Duty Free and picked up a handful of the closest boxes of not-too-expensive nor not-too-cheap chocolates with a picture of their holiday resort on the front to distribute as required. Postcards, on the other hand, I love writing and receiving, as the person has to make some effort to write them, but in Japan, even with the traditions of nengajou postcards for New Year, mochuu cards for deaths, chuugen cards in the summer, etc, holiday postcards are almost never sent, and in fact are very difficult to find even at the big tourist spots.

Anyway, back to the rankings.
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