世論 What Japan Thinks

For lots, lots more Japanese text emoticons and facemarks, be sure to check out Evoticon.net!

In the middle of June, goo Ranking surveyed its readers by means of a public internet questionnaire on what emoticons, or smilies, they often used in mail from their personal computers. The following table presents the top thirty emoticons list. As usual for goo Ranking, number one slot gets ranked with 100 points, and all the rest with the proportion of votes relative to the top vote. More detailed demographics, etc, are not available.

Back in April, I translated another survey on the use of smilies, or emoticons, on Japanese mobile phones, that you may want to reference. Even though the people responding to this survey are (supposed to be!) adult, emoticons reveal a cute childish playfulness, I feel.

Please feel free to use these in your email or messenger applications to add some japanese emotions to your chat!
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As part of their 85th round of Ranking Research carried out over the end of June and start of July, DIMSDRIVE Research asked 5,367 people from their monitor group what they would want to be if they change into something else for just one day.
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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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Watching Trivia no Izumi tonight, I saw this rather entertaining optical illusion, assuming your browser chooses a suitable Japanese font:

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Or going uphill:

ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏

In further trivia news, by harnessing the power of 200 standard fire extinquishers, you can generate enough upthrust to lift a man a whole two centimetres.

Trivia no Izumi has a silly wee survey they conducted with 100 kids aged around 6 or 7 I think. The idea was that their mothers gave them 10 yen to buy a sweetie from a shop, but the owner of the shop fumbled the coin dropping it into a box only to pull out a 100 yen and 500 yen coin, asking the kid to choose which one of the two he or she dropped. Apparently this is based on a famous children’s tale. Of course, all the children who lied were later being told off by their mother and went back to the shop to fix everything up.

The final result, as you can see from the graph to the right, is that 63 out of the 100 children were honest enough to admit that it was neither of these coins that they dropped; 29 said it was the 100 yen, 7 chose the 500 yen, and one kid with a promising career ahead as a yakuza (or a politician, I suppose) said both were his.

The hidden cameras captured the kids mulling over their thievery, with the most enterprising soul claiming the 100 yen first, going out to the Kinder Egg-like toy vending machine (what do you call them?) only to find it required 200 yen, so he returned inside and said it was actually the 500 yen coin he had dropped…

Tonight’s Trivia no Izumi had a viewer writing in asking what was the best way to conduct oneself on Saint Valentine’s Day in order to improve one’s chances of getting chocolate from a woman – remember that in Japan St Valentine’s Day is gifts from women to men only.

First up they asked 500 men what they would do, and got a panel of 100 women to vote on each of the activities to see if they agreed it might improve their chances. Amongst the collected suggestions were talking in a loud voice, working a bit harder or conducting oneself more lively, gelling or otherwise styling one’s hair, and acting cool. Each of these options garnered a mere handful of votes from the female panelists, the best score being an insignificant 7 out of 100, proving that in Japan too, men are from 火星 and women are from 金星 (Mars and Venus, of course; literally the fire and gold planets respectively).

So, taking a different tack, they enlisted the help of four female psychologists to try to find out what they thought men should do. After a three-hour exchange of views, the collected opinion on how men can increase their chance of getting Valentine’s chocolates was simply to leave your bag open by your desk over lunch or other break time, so your secret admirer could silently slip the prezzie in without fear of a confrontation or rejection.

If you hear about a massive increase of thefts from briefcases next week, you know who to blame!