世論 What Japan Thinks

The site t-news Web, a site for university students that claims to have over 30,000 subscribers from the Tokyo area, with a high percentage of them being medical students from Tokyo and Waseda Universities, took a look at underage drinking by university students.

Demographics

Over the 20th and 21th of April 2013 323 undergraduate and postgraduate students completed an internet-based questionnaire. 51% of the sample were male, and 25% were from Tokyo University, 16% from Waseda University, 14% from Keio University, 3% from Hitotsubashi University, and 42% from other.

Judging by other forums, asking about the drinking age and carding is a common question for people planning to come to Japan, so as far as I am aware from other people’s input, there is very little if any checking of credentials except perhaps at night clubs. Most convenience stores and supermarkets, however, when you buy booze the till pops up a message on a screen asking you to confirm if you are 20 years old, usually both in English and Japanese. I’ve not actually bought any booze outside a pub for years, but it appears that there is no “NO” button on the till, so unless you shop in a school uniform no-one quite frankly bothers.
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goo Ranking often looks at what behaviours people hate, but this time for a change they look at what behaviour when going out drinking in mixed company (particularly office parties) by members of the opposite sex would they find unavoidably attractive, for both men looking at women and women looking at men.

Demographics

Over the 6th and 7th of February 2013 1,122 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 60.1% of the sample were female, 10.2% in their teens, 16.6% in their twenties, 26.5% in their thirties, 25.0% in their forties, 11.1% in their fifties, and 10.6% 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.
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DIMSDRIVE Research recently reported on a survey from last August into drinking alcohol.

Demographics

Between the 19th of August and 2nd of September 2010 7.069 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.6% of the sample were male, 9.9% in their twenties, 29.8% in their thirties, 32.5% in their forties, 18.1% in their fifties, and 9.7% aged sixty or older.

Normally, I fall into the once every two or three month category, although when I have a business trip overseas I may occassionally have an extra shandy or two; I’m most likely off to Munich next month, so I might force myself to sample a litre or five of the local brew…

Here’s Tokyo Metro telling you to get beered up at home, not in the platform:

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Looking at this recent survey from iShare into alcohol people want to drink warm, although the traditional Scottish hot toddy seems very much unknown, the Japanese equivalent is a sake egg-nog called Tamoago-zake, but I don’t fancy the sound of it.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 14th of October 2010 459 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.8% of the sample were male, 29.4% in their twenties, 32.5% in their thirties, and 38.1% in their forties.

Some of people’s favourite recipes included shochu plus umeboshi (sour plum) plus hot water, warmed white wine mixed with a little honey, red wine stewed with herbs, spices and dried fruit, plum wine diluted with hot water, kumquat wine with ginger and cut with hot water, rum and butter and sugar and boilng water, and finally rum and sugar cubes added to boiling milk.
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According to recent guidance from the World Health Organisation, they would like member states to limit alcohol promotions, so in Japan the all-too-common nomihodai – all you can drink may very well be in their sights. To find out what the average Japanese person thought of this, iShare conducted a survey into the subject of banning them.

Demographics

Between the 12th and 15th of July 2010 441 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.3% of the sample were male, 29.0% in their twenties, 32.9% in their thirties, and 38.1% in their forties.

The usual nomihodai is when you go out for a course meal as a group. An average work outing will be between 2,000 and 5,000 yen for food only, then an all you can drink on top of 1,000 to 2,000 yen. The menu will be quite varied, soft drinks, one or two types of beer, various fruity chu-hai alcopops and other cocktails, a number of types of sake, and whisky, usually with a two-hour limit to match the food. I’ve never seen hot tea or coffee though, now I think about it.

I don’t think many people really abuse it, although Japan has got more of a drinking problem than it wishes to admit to, I think. I’d target effort more towards the cheap gut-rot spirits and the even cheaper supermarket own-brand alcopops that are about five times cheaper per unit than the mainstream beer brands and under the 40p per unit minimum price that the Scottish government is probably going to recommend.
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Here’s another interesting look at drinking alcohol with MyVoice.

Demographics

Over the first five days of October 2009 13,102 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 14% in their twenties, 32% in their thirties, 32% in their forties, and 22% aged fifty or older.

I just read today about Japan and the social cost of alcohol, which is interesting reading, and I agree on the whole with the facts and the conclusion, although the estimate of the number of alcoholics seems on the low side, or else the diagnosis of an alcoholic in Japan is somewhat different to the west. The most interesting figure, though, is the social cost of alcohol. This article say 6.6 trillion yen, whereas a similar figure from a BBC article suggests £6.4 billion in terms of productivity losses. Working at 150 yen to the pound and populations of 130 million versus 65 million, that makes the cost to Japan industry almost 3.5 times greater!
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Rather than just another survey on consumer interests, here’s something a bit different, a look at recent trends in smoking and drinking rates amongst Japanese schoolchildren. The multiple surveys were conducted and analysed by Central Research Services.

Demographics

I only have concrete demographics for the 1996 and 2000 surveys; both surveys asked students at about 70 to 90 junior and senior high schools, getting over 100,000 replies both times, representing over 60% of the students enrolled in each institution.

The remarkable drop in smoking and drinking rates is quite surprising, and I must admit to being a bit skeptical about the results on first reading. However, the survey report referenced a paper entitled Decrease in the prevalence of smoking among Japanese adolescents and its possible causes: periodic nationwide cross-sectional surveys (English) that tried to explain the huge drop. Their conculsion is as stunning as the statistics themselves – more schoolchildren have no friends, thus no peer pressure to indulge in such underage vices.

Photo from Don’t fry leeks,please on flickr.
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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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I left the UK just as alcopops, fizzy drink-like youth-targeted cheap and relatively high in alcohol drinks started to become a serious problem due to their appeal to under-age drinkers. In Japan there is chuhai, and this is what MyVoice looked at in their sixth canned chuhai survey.

Demographics

Over the first five days in September 2008 15,054 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 15% in their twetnies, 36% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 20% in their fifties.

According to the dictionary, chuhai is an abbreviation of shochu highball, Japanese spirits with tonic water, although the canned form often bears little resemblence to its humble origin. Alcohol content varies from 4% to 7%, and due to low tax rates one can of supermarket own-brand costs 88 yen (84 US cents or 45 UK pennies) for 330 millitres, close to half the price of branded beer, or about a third less than happoshu, and even cheaper when you consider the price per unit of alcohol.

By the way, yes, Suntory Calorie. actually does have a full stop after Calorie, it’s not a misprint!
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Healthy beer is a phrase one doesn’t hear too often, but that’s basically the title of a recent survey conducted by MyVoice into health-related beer-like drinks.

Demographics

Over the first five days of March 2008 14,373 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 15% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 16% in their fifties. Note that since the legal drinking age is twenty, teenagers were excluded from this survey.

I got a free can of Kirin ZERO for going to see a cross-dressing dancing General Douglas MacArthur (don’t ask!) but my wife gave it away to the father-in-law before I got a chance to sample it. I tried Tanrei Green Label and it was just as much swill as the full-sugar Tanrei!

In Q7, being good for health is an interesting answer. I suspect it is not just a poor wording (“can control calorie intake” might have been better), but I’ve seen people on television interpret “not so bad for you” as “can consume as much as I like.” One strong memory is of an actor knocking back two or more bottles of red wine a night and being shocked when the doctor told him that that was a bad thing.
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