世論 What Japan Thinks

This slightly broken English in the post title is the catchphrase of not just Osaka’s, but a national promotion to persuade people to view looking after their teeth as a lifelong commitment. I’ve covered teeth in a number of other posts, but the statistical fact I learnt yesterday on a train covered in posters for said campaign was that current 80 year olds (in Osaka only? in the whole of Japan?) only have on average around four teeth left.

The reasons for this poor record are not just as revealed in the earlier surveys, a lack of regular care and maintentance by a professional, but also a large number of dentists who would often rather just yank a tooth instead of repairing it. There’s also more than a fair share of incompetent dentists, of course, but fortunately mine doesn’t fall into either category.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, or check out my weekly newsletter. Thanks for visiting!

Just a quick report tonight from Nielson//NetRatings Japan on internet usage from home computers (not mobile phones) for the month of May 2006. First the graph for time spent on the top six sites.

This 16.3% for Yahoo! Japan represents about 125,000,000 hours, or an average of around 168,000 simultaneous users. However, when looking at time spent per user who visited each site, for mixi it was 4 hours and 28 minutes per person, over an hour longer per person than for Yahoo! Japan. In total, 42,400,000 people accessed the internet from home during May, with an average time spent online per person of 18 hours and two minutes.
Read the rest of this entry »

Watching Trivia no Izumi tonight, I saw this rather entertaining optical illusion, assuming your browser chooses a suitable Japanese font:

杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー杏マナー

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.

The Japanese Government’s Statistical Bureau recently released statistics on what I think is the biggest problem that will face Japan in the coming year, namely the decline in the number of births, which coupled with the aging population, is going to put an enormous strain on Japan’s finances in the years to come.

This year too (measured on the first of April) the number of children aged under 15 hit another record low, a 25 year unbroken decline in the birth rate. The headline figures are 17,470,000 children under 15 years old, representing 13.7% of the population, down 0.1 percentage points from last year. There also seems to be an imbalance in the sex distribution, with 105.3 boys for every 100 girls. The reason for this may be worth investigating.
Read the rest of this entry »

Regardless of how long I live here, and how often people try to explain the Yakuza to me, I always shake my head in disbelief when I see stories like this one on the guys who put the Organised into Organised Crime.

Crime syndicates in Japan had around 86,300 members as of Dec. 31, down some 700 from a year earlier, marking the first drop in 10 years, the National Police Agency said Thursday. The Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi, accounted for 50.1% of all the members, passing the majority threshold for the first time.

What sort of questionnaire got these answers? Do the gangs submit annual reports? I can only imagine the text: “The chairman reports that outstanding bad debts are down 22.9% due to a 16.3% increase in the number of kneecaps broken. Workforce loyalty is also strong, as indicated by a two-thirds reduction in pinkie removals.” Three significant figures of accuracy suggests relatively detailed numbers are being obtained from somewhere, but where?

Note that the graph above may not, in fact, be truthful. In fact, I may very well have made it all up!

I obtained some figures of international marriage in Japan, which I shall summarise here, giving the historical trends from 1985 to 2003. The exact source of this statistical data is unclear, but presumably from some government agency.

UPDATE: I found the source, an Excel sheet on the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare web site.

	1985	1990	1995	2000	2001	2002	2003
All couples	735,850	722,138	791,888	798,138	799,999	757,331	740,191
Husband and wife both Japanese	723,669	696,512	764,161	761,875	760,272	721,452	704,152
Either foreigner	12,181	25,626	27,727	36,263	39,727	35,879	36,039
Husband Japanese, wife foreign	7,738	20,026	20,787	28,326	31,972	27,957	27,881
Wife Japanese, husband foreign	4,443	5,600	6,940	7,937	7,755	7,922	8,158

Read the rest of this entry »