世論 What Japan Thinks

Trivia no Izumi (Fount/Spring of Trivia) outdid itself tonight, with a survey to find out when people who had been married for three years first heard their wife pass gas! They interviewed 1000 Japanese husbands by means of an internet poll, and as you can see in the pie chart on the right, almost half the wives (43%) couldn’t keep it in for more than a year. 29% first let rip in the second year, 16% avoided a bottom burp until their third year, and 12% of husbands have been spared their wives’ anal emissions.

For good measure, this segment of the show also had face-to-face interviews with some of the husbands describing the how and where of their wives’ flatulance, accompanied by their wedding photos, leaving their neighbours in no doubt who they were talking about!

To finish up this item of trivia, they persuaded one of the wives who had never passed gas in front of her husband to try to do it, so their hidden cameras could capture this moment for posterior-ity…

Oh, and I certainly will not tell you what category my wife falls into!

Following on from the recent census, there are some additional questions that need to be answered by all foreigners living in Japan. I urge all readers to urgently visit this page and complete the survey! (*^_^*)

Also, sorry, but real life’s been a bit busy so updates are thin on the ground!

This week’s silly survey, once again from Trivia no Izumi, took 100 mongrels and 100 owners, and when they went out for a walk, the owner fell over ill and hoped Lassie would come home and drag someone out to rescue their dying master. Of course, most people brimmed with confidence regarding their dog’s intelligence, but quite unsurprisingly to me, all failed miserably. A few dogs did demostrate concern, I thought, but then again others just took the chance to have a free run-around.

First off is Trivia no Izumi (“The Fountain of Trivia”), probably my favourite program on Japanese TV as it deadpans its way through often very silly trivia, with many exceptionally-well conceived little films to explain the stories. There’s a very famous book and comic book and web page and film and TV series and cuddly toy and kitchen sink, The Train Man (Densha Otoko), which traces the story (probably true, on the whole) of a guy after he helps a woman being hassled by a drunk. So, Trivia no Izumi decided to put the story to the test, by setting up a situation where a typical Akihabara geek encounters a young woman being harrassed by some middle-aged guy. So, all these pasty-faced weeds encountered a woman being verbally abused, and we got to watch as the guys tried to screw up enough courage to intervene. Much to my surprise, but then again, since they all had no doubt seen Densha Otoko and knew the story, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, of the 100 guys (including one in a Sailor Moon-like suit!) that encountered the situation, 69 intervened to try to protect the woman. Rather a heartening result, I thought!

Next stat off the telly was from London Boots. It’s too complicated to explain, but basically they get 10 male comedians (mostly) and get 100 random women between 18 and 45 to rank them in various categories.
This week’s show was to select who looks to be of the least calibre (or least classy). The “winner” was GEKIDAN Hitori (a stage name that roughly translates to “one-man theatre troupe”, and who, by sheer coincidence, seems to appear in the TV version of Densha Otoko!) and amongst the reasons that people gave for choosing him, was that he looked like the sort of person who’d post anonymously to 2 Channel with a positive review of himself. When presented with this opinion on the show, he did in fact admit to making a posting just like that on another star’s home page!

And now to the point of this post – the comment about pumping yourself anonymously (ooh-er missus) rung true a bit with me – I must say I have been tempted to do that with this blog at the various blog aggregating sites. But no, I want to see how, or even if this blog can float up the rankings without resorting to cheap tricks.