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!
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!
Continuing on from cheese, we now move to that most wonderful of Japanese sweeties, Pocky. Apparently the 11th of November is Pocky and Pretz (a savoury version of Pocky) Day, presumably as 11 11 looks like four Pocky sticks. I can guess that Pretz is so-called as it is perhaps reminiscent of a pretzel, but why Pocky?
As usual, no demographics, just the relative votes from a survey conducted towards the end of October. I like most of the Pocky advertisements, so I was rather pleased to find someone doing their own YouTube version of one of the current commercials.
In my never-ending quest to bring you the finest in studies of Japanese consumer habits, I present the latest goo Ranking survey on cheese for your edification. As usual for these rankings, the scoring is expressed as percentages; the finest fermented curd scores 100 points, and all other cheesy comestibles score according to the ratio of their votes to the number one.
Some trivia: apparently cheese (when first introduced to Japan anyway) smelt as bad to the Japanese as natto does to us Westerners. Most cheese sold in Japan is made in Japan, and whilst I can understand it in cheddar’s case, Hokkaido mozzarella still seems rather strange to me. The chance of any cheese purchased in Japanese tasting anything like Western-produced cheese is rather remote, bar the plastic processed cheese slices that are equally revolting the world over!
If you thought yesterday’s survey was a strange thing to ask about, here’s an even odder one – goo Ranking on one’s favourite cloud. As usual for goo Rankings, there is no demographic information, and the top-scoring costume gets 100 points and all the rest get rates as a percentage of the top rank. This survey was also conducted over a three day period towards the end of September.
In addition, the auspicious clouds answer includes, I believe, the popular Japanese folk belief that earthquakes are preceded by very red clouds at sunset.
Living in Japan, one would, however, get the impression that the favourite clouds are from the fog of cigarette smoke. My personal favourite is my tag cloud. Read the rest of this entry »
goo Ranking published today the results of one of their ranking surveys into what costumes people would like to try on in private, for both men and women. As usual for goo Rankings, there is no demographic information, and the top-scoring costume gets 100 points and all the rest get rates as a percentage of the top rank. Both surveys were conducted over a three day period towards the end of September.
Note that for some of the costumes it does not specify if it is male or female, such as for the women selecting Harry Potter; whether it is Harry himself they want to dress up as or as Hermione is not clear. However, I feel it is safe to assume that cross-dressing in private is a popular desire.
I’ve also linked a few of the costumes to work-safe material, so don’t worry too much about clicking on the links.
Following on from yesterday’s post showing us that the best way of getting rich quick is the lottery, here’s a survey from goo Ranking about where people keep their lottery tickets. As usual for these ranking surveys, there is no demographic information and the rank for each choice is expressed as a percentage of the votes for the top answer. The survey was conducted towards the end of August.
Don’t ask me why people put their tickets in the fridge, but if anyone else knows, please leave me a message. Read the rest of this entry »
goo Ranking did another silly wee opinion survey recently, this one looking at what were unusual but tasty mayonnaise combinations. As usual, no demographics, and scores are expressed as percentages of the top votes-getter.
Kewpie mayonnaise is my favourite mayonnaise, not that I like the taste much, nor that I put it on anything other than salad, but their adverts are wonderful!
Don’t ask me why Thane is so popular, and many of the other answers seem like people were just struggling to remember any gaijin’s name. Note that KONISHIKI, an ex-sumo champion, is actually a naturalised Japanese, I believe. Also note that for some reason they give the state that the USA people were born in, and “Los Angeles State” is an error in the published survey!
From that list, I think Panzetta Girolamo (a middle-aged Italian playboy sort of guy) is about the only person who might be interesting to go off on a trip with. Read the rest of this entry »
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