世論 What Japan Thinks

This survey will perhaps go some way to solving one of the greatest mysteries to foreign visitors to these climes, namely do all Japanese do the peace sign when getting their photo taken. This is the subject that iShare addressed.

Demographics

Between the 28th of August and the 2nd of September 2009 521 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.6% of the sample were male, 34.0% in their twenties, 31.9% in their thirties, and 34.2% in their forties.

It’s a bit late to write a comment, so let’s just go straight to the survey! Click on the photos to go to the original on flickr.
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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last month or two you surely must have heard about the Democratic Party of Japan winning the recent general election. During the run-up, I steered away from publishing polls regarding it as there are blogs out there with much better political coverage than me, and anyway since the election outcome was pretty much a foregone conclusion, I didn’t really find them that interesting.

However, now with the election out of the way, here’s a quick look by iShare at ,a href=”http://release.center.jp/2009/09/1801.html”>expectations for the new Japan. Note that iShare’s monitor demographic is I feel quite geeky, so it may be a bit fraught with danger to extrapolate these results to the general public.

Demographics

Between the 31st of August (the day after the election) to the 3rd of September 2009 523 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private online questionnaire. 56.4% of the sample were male, 32.1% in their twenties, 31.9% in their thirties, and 35.9% in their forties.

For me too uncertainties outweigh expectations. Being a non-car-owner with a full time homemaker wife I fall outside the two large demographics that are going to get benefits thrown at them, and although them promising to cut wasteful public spending is of course a good move (assuming they can achieve their goal, of course) so far all I have seen is measures that put even more people out of work in a time of record unemployment, without a concrete plan for job creation.
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Although when I lived in Ayr I used to go to their racecourse, I’ve felt absolutely zero interesting in racecourses in Japan, the subject of a recent survey from iShare.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 26th of August 2009 545 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private online questionnaire. 52.3% of the sample were male, 34.1% in their twenties, 33.0% in their thirties, and 32.8% in their forties.

The horses is one of the few things that one in Japan can legally gamble on. Rather than lots of small betting shops like there is in the UK, instead there are massive gambling halls where everyone gathers to (presumably, as I’ve never been inside) watch satellite broadcasts of the races and bet.

Despite TV adverts portraying horse racing as hip and happening I see mostly middle-aged men shuffling in and out of the bookies and the racetracks.
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With this summer’s poor weather causing a thin harvest of vegetables thus an increase in prices, iShare decided to look at a current hot topic, oddly-shaped vegetables.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 21st of August 2009 538 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private online questionnaire. 56.3% of the sample were male, 29.7% in their twenties, 31.4% in their thirties, and 38.8% in their forties.

I’ve not seen any oddly-shaped veggies in the supermarket myself, although I’ve bought such ones at a farmers market or other direct from the farm outlet.

As for price increases, potatoes and onions are definitely up about 25%, cucumbers are in a bit of short supply, so it’s difficult to say, and lettuce is very expensive, as most seem to be about the same price as last year but half the size. I’ve not really noticed any difference for other veggies, however.
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Having looked earlier at television recording habits, here’s an interesting look at what people do next from iShare, when they asked people how they consumed recorded television.

Demographics

Between the 19th and 24th of August 2009 591 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.0% of the sample were male, 35.2% in their twenties, 31.3% in their thirties, and 33.5% in their forties.

Since we got our hard disk DVD recorder the amount of recorded television has increased, but my watching has decreased! At least blank DVDs are reasonably-priced and don’t take up quite as much space as the millions of VHS tapes lying around the house…
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Maids versus butlers would be a good title for a video game I suspect, but here it is just two related surveys from iShare, one on maids and the other on butlers.

Demographics

For the maid survey, between the 10th and 17th of August 2009 618 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.6% of the sample were male, 34.3% in their twenties, 30.4% in their thirties, and 35.3% in their forties.

For the butler survey, between the 11th and 18th of August 2009 587 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.7% of the sample were male, 33.6% in their twenties, 32.0% in their thirties, and 34.4% in their forties.

I’ll report the two surveys interleaved as the questions are similar in each. First will be the maid question which I will suffix with an M, so we get Q1M, for instance, then the butler question with a B, as in Q1B, etc.

Both maid cafes and butler cafes exist in Japan, as do female butler cafes, and no doubt male maid ones do too, but I’m not really in the mood for searching. Incidentally, I’ve recently twice seen on my train back from work a guy looking like a very ordinary otaku type except for a cheap maid dress, trying to hide his stubble behind some foundation, so perhaps he works at some low-end seedy male maid joint?
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One nice thing (from a shopping, not environmental point of view) in Japan is that many department stores give you a nice simple paper bag with handles for your purchases; not the cheap thin brown paper supermarket bags as seen in the US, but a decent reusable one. Brand stores and posh cake shops also give away better quality paper bags, so to see what happens when they get taken home, iShare looked at reuse of paper bags.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 11th of August 2009 586 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.7% of the sample were male, 34.3% in their twenties, 31.1% in their thirties, and 34.6% in their forties.

We have a huge amount of paper bags stocked up, probably a few hundred, although we do reuse about one per month for either just as a container when taking things to the monther-in-law, or as a posh wrapper for a cheap souvenir to friends.

Interestingly, there’s a second-hand handbag and other branded item shop that regularly advertises in a local free paper that offers a few hundred yen per Gucci or Chanel paper bag that you might want to bring along.
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Here’s a nice survey from iShare looking at hangovers.

Demographics

Between the 28th and 31st of July 551 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.4% of the sample were male, 38.7% in their twenties, 27.2% in their thirties, and 34.1% in their forties.

I’ve heard a number of people say good things about Ukon no Chikara and other tumeric-based hangover avoidance techniques, but I’ve not tried it myself.

The Japanese for hangover is 二日酔い, futsukayoi, literally “two days drunk”, which I think is a great expression! I’ve never had a three days drunk experience, but I’m surprised that only less than half the drinkers have had a “never again!” experience.
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In the past I have looked at women-only carriages, but this time I present a survey from iShare looking at train groping and men-only carriages.

Demographics

Between the 10th and 15th of July 2009 543 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.5% of the sample were male, 33.3% were in their twenties, 31.5% in their thirties, and 35.2% in their forties.

I’m not in favour of men-only carriages (although I strongly support women-only) as I’m not really sure they’d change anything; I’d love to know why people wanted them, as surely it cannot just be due to the fear of being misidentified as a groper.

For a sillier look at train segregation, here’s a ranking survey I translated previously.

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With Twitter showing little sign of adoption in Japan, and TwitterPoli, a site tracking Japanese politicians’ Tweets, having just 10 local officals and 6 national politicians being tracked, this recent survey from MyVoice looking at local government Tweeting (and other related topics) seems a bit pointless, quite frankly.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 27th of July 2009 562 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.0% of the sample were male, 34.5% in their twenties, 32.9% in their thirties, and 32.6% in their forties.

What Japan Thinks can be found on Twitter; most of the content is just automated Tweeting of my posts, but two or three times a week or so I post one-liner survey translations that don’t make it to the main blog.

Note that the Twitter usage rate of 6.2% in this survey versus 2.3% in the previously-mentioned survey can be ascribed to iShare having a more technically-minded audience; the simple fact that the survey respondent pool comes from people using an email forwarding service demonstrates this.

The two local authorities mentioned in Q4 can be read on Twitter; the links are Aomori Prefectural Office (ooh, nice background!) and Hokkaido Rikubetsucho.

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