世論 What Japan Thinks

For the benefit of all readers residents of Japan, just in case you’ve failed to notice it, the norovirus is currently doing the rounds; not a computer-borne one, but a real life food poisoning-related disease. Japundit has some advice on preventative methods, and although I’ve got no hard statistics on it, I remember hearing that at the start of the month cases were at roughly four times the usual rate, and since then there seems to have been many, many more cases. It’s possibly fatal to children and aged people, and with no current vaccine, please take care out there! One of the tabloids was suggesting that up to 10 million in Japan, or almost one in ten, could succumb over the winter.

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MutantFrog Travelogue has another great story, this time on how advertising agency Dentsu set up the whole Town Meeting business (allegedly). I”ve just added them to my Blog Roll - I should have done it ages ago as they’ve been publishing some pretty good and juicy news from Japan that usually doesn’t get aired in the English language.

Not that this has anything to do with surveys, but I saw that the BBC is starting a monthly photo competition with the topic for this month being a good one for Japan, one’s journey to work. This might be a good excuse to get your mobile’s camera out and snap away inside or outside the train. Perhaps I can ride the Thomas the Tank Engine train again and take a snap of it?

Just as a change of pace today, I got a wee email from Yume Mirai about her new blog, Japan Diary of Culture. She was kind enough to mention my site in a recent entry, so I am returning the favour through this post! She does mention a few interesting survey results, and one that particularly caught my eye was where she mentions a poll on what Japanese men find attractive in women:

The result showed what kind of women are attractive for Japanese men. Those are having a mild personality ( iyashi kei ), individual ( kosei teki ), graceful ( jyohin ) and intelligent ( chiteki ).

However, another poll I translated on what nationalities people might want to marry suggested that citizens of the USA were the most popular country for wives, but I certainly wouldn’t describe the average American woman as having a mild personality, and I’m a bit sceptical on graceful too!

Anyway, it’s a nice site, and I do like hearing genuine voices, so I can recommend you visit.

Talking about genuine voices, I also like Mari’s Diary: Me and Tokyo, who was also kind enough to write a short entry about my blog. I’ve linked to her a good number of times as she has articles on many aspects of Japanese life. There’s a vast quantity of content there, and again it’s a very real and personal collection of opinions on her life in Tokyo.

Finally, in contrast to these two blogs by Japanese, Tokyo Times is Lee Chapman’s blog on his life as a gaijin in Japan. He is sometimes cynical about what he sees, but he never gets bitter, a trap that many other gaijin blogs fall into. He’s also mainly responsible for getting that article spread around the world, plucking my blog from obscurity. To insignificance.

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