世論 What Japan Thinks

Recently MyVoice investigated the subject of confectionery consumption amongst its panel of monitors. As a cross-reference, last year MyVoice looked at cheering oneself up with sweets.

Demographics

Over the first five days of April 2009 15,582 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% were in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 35% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% after fifty or older.

I’m surprised at the relatively low figure for spending in Q6, especially given a quarter eat sweets daily – I wonder if this means people only counting treating themselves explicitly to sweets, rather than also adding in purchases of treats for children that they eat together?
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This is not quite as entertaining a FAIL as yesterday’s post, but this report from japan.internet.com on a survey conducted by iBridge Research Plus into electronic mail focused at failures in the office with BCC, Blind Carbon Copy.

Demographics

On the first of May 2009 300 members of the iBridge monitor panel completed a private intenet-based questionnaire. 55.3% of the sample were male, 13.0% in their twenties, 35.7% in their thirties, 39.7% in their forties, 8.7% in their fifties, and 3.0% in their sixties.

I can’t recall ever making a mistake with BCC, a feature I rarely use anyway, but I have been on the receiving end of huge To lists that would have been better handled with BCC.

Now I look at the results, I don’t really know what they demonstrate…
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Recently, iShare looked in detail at how people view celebrities on television, but as it features a lot of names that may not be very well-known to my average reader (nor even to me!), I’ll skip over most of the survey and highlight one very frequent complaint from many foreigners about food programs here:

Why do they all scream “Delicious!” all the time?

Watch any Japanese variety program with a food section and you’ll soon see that every mouthful of even the most mundane dish sends the gourmand (or just plain old glutton) into orgasms of delight, leaving many foreigners screaming “What’s the point?” at the television, especially as I at least find the table manners rather off-putting.

One of the survey’s questions was seeing which one celebrity eating made you hungry, and number one choice was Hidehiko Ishizuka, or Ishi-chan, or the “Ma-iu” guy, depending on how familiar you are with Japanese C-list celebrities! He is a rather sweaty and obese lump with a cavernous maw, yet one third of men and one quarter of women chose him as the person who gets their stomach rumbling. Second up was professional big eater Gal Sone, a waif of a woman who wears far too much make-up and eats by… ah, even thinking about how to describe her turns my stomach! 6.7% of men and 14.4% of women picked her. Conversely, and happily from my point of view, 48.1% of men and 39.0% of women had no-one who made them hungry.

For those who chose someone, they were asked why. The top reason was the way they ate made the food look delicious, with over nine in ten saying so. Next, just 13.1% liked the person, 9.9% felt their comments while eating were easy to understand, 7.7% said seeing the person eat made them want to eat, and just 2.7% found their comments trustworthy!

Despite the suspicious-looking title and the dodgy picture, it’s not Sunday and a silly ranking, but a serious survey from iShare into alcohol consumption and indiscretions.

Demographics

Between the 24th and 30th of April 2009 398 mobile phone-using members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private interent-based questionnaire. 51.8% of the sample were male, 39.4% in their twenties, 30.4% in their thirties, and 30.2% in their forties.

There’s so much interesting data here I hardly know where to start! In Q1SQ2 women rate themselves as stronger drinkers than men, although perhaps they are compaing themselves with other women rather than men? In Q1SQ5, it’s quite a surprisingly high number of people who’ve ended up on one-night-stands (or worse) due to alcohol.

Captioned photo based on an image from JanneM on flickr.
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Today is Mother’s Day in Japan and many other countries around the world, so I present this survey from goo Ranking into when Japan thinks “Thank you Mum!”.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 25th of March 2009 1,043 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. 52.2% of the sample were male, 7.8% in their teens, 17.1% in their twenties, 28.2% in their thirties, 24.8% in their forties, 11.4% in their fifties, and 10.7% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

Looking at the list, number 19 is a bit strange to me. I can see the point behind it, but it just seems an odd thing to highlight. For me, number 20 is probably the one that resonates the most with me – I love baking cakes, yet my wife who is very good in the kitchen cannot bake at all, so it does always impress her. My interest is due to being taught as a kid by Mum.

Since it’s Mother’s Day, the above is for a change a sensible photo from Mothers&amp:Daughters on flickr.
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One very useful number came out of this recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into internet advertising, their fifth regular survey on this subject, how often advertisements in search results catch people’s eyes. You may use the third regular survey as a cross-reference.

Demographics

Between the 20th and 23rd of April 2009 1,071 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.1% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, and 27.7% aged fifty or older.

I think Q1SQ2 is a bit of a confusing result – only 14.8% of adverisement clickers have purchased items, but not all advertisements are selling things, and even advertisements that are are often not directly selling.

I never see search ads, and it’s blocked over 400,000 advertisements in the nine months I’ve had it.
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I’m still looking for a survey on the hottest topic these days, the disease formally known as swine ‘flu, but with no luck yet, so instead you’ll have to make do with a look at an update on last year’s pandemic of mass hysteria in this survey from iShare on the Apple iPhone’s image in Japan.

Demographics

Between the 13th and 16th of April 2009 342 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service who had a mobile phone for personal use completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.3% of the sample were male, 36.8% in their twenties, 29.2% in their thirties, and 33.9% in their forties.

In Q2 it is interesting that nearly all of the series mentioned are RPGs, but given the lack of an external keypad, I’m not really too sure how well they would play. As I suspected, if you have a jailbroken phone, the MAME emulator can be downloaded to give access to the older titles, and the touchpanel controls look nice.
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Manga kissa is an abbreviation of manga kissaten, or in English comic cafe, the term I will use from now on. They can be found all over Japan, but I have yet to enter one as I have an image of them being very smokey. However, nearly half of all Japanese have been in one, according to this recent survey by Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com on the subject of comic cafes.

Demographics

Over the 27th and 28th of April 2009 300 members of the Marsh monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Exactly 50.0% of the respondents were female, 0.3% in their teens, 19.7% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older. Don’t ask me why one teenager sneaked in to disrupt the even split!

Searching around I found an interesting concept in comic cafes, Manboo, which, as the name intentionally or unintentionally suggests, appears to be a female-oriented cafe with a suspiciously Yahoo!-like logo yet has Yahoo! search embedded on its home page. I’m confused…
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This recent survey from MyVoice into tea and tea-like drinks, their second on the subject, with the first from two years ago translated here) found actually that coffee was the top drink, replacing green tea at the top of the list.

Demographics

Over the first five days of April 2009 15,578 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 35% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older.

Recently when it comes to packaged drinks I’ve been more of a diet coke person, but I drink mostly black tea at work and green and houji (roasted green tea) at home. That’s a good point, does the “other Japanese tea” in Q1 include houji, or does it get counted with green tea? My personal feeling is that it falls under the other Japanese tea category.

In the following questions, “tea-related drinks” covers green tea, other Japanese tea, Chinese tea, black (Indian) tea, and blended tea (either tea tea or other tea-like base) plus other herbs.
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With today being Children’s Day in Japan, I present a survey that is sort-of connected to the theme, a look with goo Ranking at hidden secrets that prevent people rating themselves as proper adults, for both men and women.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 25th of March 2009 1,043 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. 52.2% of the sample were male, 7.8% in their teens, 17.1% in their twenties, 28.2% in their thirties, 24.8% in their forties, 11.4% in their fifties, and 10.7% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

With these silly goo Rankings I do occasionally get creative with my translation, and I get some feedback from my readers about my less than literal translations, but I hope that since these surveys are just a bit of fun, any creativity (or flat-out errors) can be excused. For example, this survey question would directly translate as – actually, now I’ve started analysing my translation I cannot actually give a good literal translation. Perhaps I shouldn’t have even started this train of thought!

Talking of literal translations, the first number six for women actually reads “I can’t eat sushi without removing the rust“, so I hope you’ll let me off with that change!

I haven’t a clue why closing one’s eyes while washing one’s hair would be scary, barring being traumatised by watching Psycho at too young an age.
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