世論 What Japan Thinks

You may remember last month I published a survey on what makes Japanese women run a mile, so now it’s time to look with goo Ranking at what female actions make men run a mile at drinking parties.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 24th of December 2007 1,094 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private online questionnaire. 45.6% of the sample was male, 8.8% were in their teens, 15.6% in their twenties, 29.1% in their thirties, 26.8% in their forties, 10.7% in their fifties, and 9.0% aged sixty or older. Obviously only the male 45.6%, or 499 people, answered this particular question. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

The most obvious difference between this and the previous survey is groping! It was the top hate for women, but the bottom one for men. Another notable exception from the men’s list is the number 7 from the women’s list, pestering someone for their phone number! My top two would have to be smoking and poor table manners.
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With the 忘年会, bounenkai, end-of-year party season upon us and many of us perhaps having headed to our first one tonight flush with our winter bonuses, let’s take a quick look with goo Ranking at what male actions make women run a mile at drinking parties. The fieldwork for the survey was conducted over the 24th and 25th of October 2007 amongst female members of the goo Research monitor group. Note that the vast majority of activities here would result in the guy being slapped with a sexual harrassment suit in the West, and probably also in Japan, although the law is not as frequently invoked here.

Number 8 is perhaps a bit strange and culturally specific, and although thankfully I’ve not witnessed it myself, apparently after a quantity of alcohol Japanese men sometimes do remove their shirts or more. May these be the only undies you whip off for a young lady in the pub!

Anyway, I hope none of my readers got up to or suffered from the activities described within! You may want to cross-reference with previous survey on drunken old git behaviour.
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The delightful character pictured above represents the top behaviour (or should the be the bottom?) that Japanese find objectionable in drunks. Click on his sozzled visage, and for just 420 yen (US$3.50 or so) you too can take him, or one of his friends, home tonight! So, here we go with this pair of surveys from goo Research on what people end up doing when drunk and what behaviour in drunks other people find uncomfortable.

Demographics

Between the 19th and 21st of June 2007 an unspecified number of members of the goo Research online monitor group supplied their answers to the questions via a private internet-based questionnaire. As usual for goo Ranking, the top item gets 100 points, and the others get a score that corresponds to the percentage of votes in relation to the top voted item.

My biggest failing when drunk is I suppose talking in a loud voice, which seems to start even before I have any alcohol!

I found it interesting in Q1 that men flirt but women sexually harrass, according to the Japanese terms used to describe getting frisky after a couple of shandies.
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With the New Year soon to be upon us, infoPLANT took a look at the subject of drinking during the end of the year holidays. The data provided below is part of a 15 question survey available for purchase from their web site. For the survey, 800 internet users completed a web-based survey over the first two days in December. The sample was equally split 50:50 male and female, and 25:25:25:25 in each age group from the twenties to the fifties and older.

This promised to be an interesting survey, but turned out to be rather dull once I started translating it. Might as well post it, however, but aplogies in advance!
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In January, DIMSDRIVE Research interviewed by means of an internet-based questionnaire 1,454 people, 59.2% male, to find out what people do to get rid of a hangover. The Japanese for hangover is 二日酔い, futsukayoi, “two days drunk”, which I think is a wonderfully descriptive term!

I find the whole subject of Japan and drink fascinating, and whilst I’m still to find the one survey that confirms my suspicion that whilst overall alcohol consumption in Japan may be lower than in the West, there are comparable, if not higher, figures for regular drinkers, and more worryingly, regular heavy drinkers. Alcohol abuse is still not recognised here as a societal problem; I’m not some sort of Puritan calling for prohibition, of course, just someone who wishes booze was taken seriously.

As a small anecdote, in one of our company magazines we got a depression checklist, and one of the signs was not wishing to join in with office drinking sessions; for me, these events cause me stress, and paying 4,000 to 5,000 yen to sit in a usually very smokey pub for two hours as people continute to talk shop all around whilst making do with a veggie option that is a poor excuse for a meal is not really my idea of fun; I’d rather be snuggling up with wifey under the kotatsu watching the telly at home!
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Continuing my recent alcohol theme, and to get all seasonal, this time MyVoice looked at what people thought about 梅酒, umeshu, or Plum Wine. 15,579 members of their MyVoice Community, 54% female, completed their internet-based questionnaire at the start of March. In the sample there were 23% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

For me, umeshu is just too sweet and has an artificial flavour, even in those brands that are 100% natural ingredients. Although the adverts for it are almost exclusively female-oriented, I am surprised that less than a quarter identified it as a feminine drink. Almost two in five chose it as a health drink, which is not really surprising as a lot of people hear a snippet of health news (or even quackery) and take it to heart; for instance, one famous actor recently admitted to drinking over two bottles of red wine a day, and another model quaffed about 18 cups of coffee, both convinced that since both these substances in moderation have certain benefits, one cannot take too much of them.
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infoPLANT recently released a survey, performed using their usual method of a menu option within the DoCoMo iMode service, to find out what people thought about beer, happoshu and third-sector beer. Note that this survey was self-selecting, but since it has nothing to do with mobile phones, there should not be too major a problem with the survey population this time. 7,668 people, 61.0% female, responded to the survey, conducted over one week at the end of February.

Beer almost always means lager in Japan, happoshu is a low-malt beer-like drink(can’t stand the stuff myself), and third-sector beer is wheat and malt free, and instead is made from pea and other vegetable proteins and the one time I drunk it it tasted suprisingly nice and smooth.

I think I have found one statistic I’ve been seeking for a long time – here we have 13.8% of men in their twenties reporting daily beer consumption. Looking at a table from my homeland of Scotland, we can see that in 1998 only 7% of males aged 25 to 34 drunk any alcohol daily. However, looking at those men who drink at least once a week, the Scots have a significantly higher figure, although remember that includes all alcohol types. Similarly, but even more markedly, a mere 3% of young Scotswomen drink any alcohol daily, whereas over three times as many, 10.1% of Japanese women in their twenties consume beer daily. These differences are repeated across all the age groups.

Contrasting the daily figures with the weekly ones, I think it is a fair conclusion to draw that whilst the Japanese may overall have a lower frequency of alcohol consumption than the Scots, there are a higher number of regular drinkers amongst the Japanese population.

Note that neither survey addresses the volume of consumption, but with the recommended maximum weekly intake of 21 units for men and 14 for women, two large half-litre cans for men or two small 330 ml cans for women of beer-like drinks will most likely put the daily drinkers over the safe limit, and that ignores any other alcohol the Japanese may be consuming. Taking the adult population of Japan to be about 103 million and taking 18.6% of that figure we get the tabloid headline figure above, which does make certain assumptions, of course, some that might make the figure lower and others that make it higher.
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MyVoice carried out another of their quirky surveys at the start of March, asking 15,608 members of their MyVoice internet community about their blissful alcohol moments. 46% of the respondents to their internet questionnaire were male, with 24% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

The average Japanese person’s moment of alcoholic bliss is a standard beer whilst eating a meal with the spouse in the living room.

My all too rare, sadly, moments of bliss with alcohol are a cool evening sitting with wifey outside a European bar or cafe sipping a cool continental lager or weissbier.

Oh, and this is my 200th post – if I had some beer in the house I’d raise a glass in celebration!
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[part 1 | part 2]

I have translated this slightly old survey from Hi-Ho Marketing Services regarding alcohol consumption and attitudes. This survey was carried out at the end of May 2003 by means of an internet questionnaire amongst 6,055 people from all over the country. 43.4% of the respondents were male, and 67.4% were married. 40.0% were in their thirties, and just a fraction under 25% were in their twenties and their forties.

The second half of this survey sees lots of people engaging in what might be called dangerous drinking habits, such as having a drink or two before bedtime. This casual view of alcohol is backed up by a later question where people identify it as a stress-reducers and a source of fun. In fact, the final question about attitudes misses out many negative issues, such as it being a cause of traffic accidents or domestic violence, leading me to suspect that this survey may have been commisioned by one of beer producers.
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infoPlant published a survey on purchase and consumption of low-alcohol drinks. They got 6,071 responses, 63.3% female, from their usual method of an iMode menu-based prize draw survey, held for a week at the end of November.

Note that low-alcohol drinks here are not what you might guess them to be, namely reduced- or zero-alcohol beers, but instead means any alcoholic drink that is not too strong; a chugging rather than a sipping drink, perhaps. The survey introduction specifically mentions chu-hai, a usually rather dangerous fruity cocktail that often weighs in at 7% alcohol by volume yet tastes like just a fruit soda, along with beer and ready-mixed can cocktails as being the drinks of interest in the questionnaire.

Whether or not people were answering for themselves personally or for their whole family, or whether or not purchases in bars and restaurants were included is not clear, although I suspect that it means store-bought alcohol, judging by the answers to question 2.
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