世論 What Japan Thinks

Ahh, coffee! I really love a good cup of coffee, but if I drink more than one cup a day the caffeine affects my sleep patterns. I can get away with many cups of tea, though; it’s just coffee’s (and dark chocolate’s, and gyokuro green tea’s) caffeine that does me in. Anyway, MyVoice took a look at the role of coffee in everyday life to see what the average Japanese thinks.

Demographics

Over the first five days of August 2007 12,126 members of the MyVoice online community successfully completed an online survey. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 17% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

I’ve looked at coffee consumption before, but hopefully this survey sheds some new light on the subject. Note that Q1 describes the most often drunk type, so perhaps those who drink canned coffee on the way to work, for instance, also down instant or filter coffee at the office, thus resulting in the poor showing for canned coffee in the results?

There’s a new advertisement out for Wonda Morning Shot canned coffee out now, so I tried my hand at uploading it to YouTube, so hopefully this works for you all. It features the famous director Akira Kurosawa, mounted samurai hordes, and a rush-hour train.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49No_dO9i-4

Go here if you are having YouTube problems to see the original - it’s my first go at uploading anything to YouTube.
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infoPLANT recently looked at the purchase and consumption of canned and other prepared coffee - this excluded take away coffee, I believe. They gathered their self-selecting survey by means on a menu option through the DoCoMo iMode menuing system. Over a week at the start of October 6,480 successfully completed the survey, with 65.7% of the respondents being female.

News of a new, heavily promoted can brand entitled Deepresso is doing the rounds of the blogs right now, but I personally prefer a hot and steamy Sixty-Nine in the mornings to get me going.

A bit of coffee trivia - apparently “morning service”, a discounted breakfast most coffee shops do consisting of a hot drink, perhaps toast, boiled egg, three lettuce leaves or a hot dog, was initially introduced in the ’50s or ’60s by a restaurant in Namba, Osaka, where it consisted of a cup of coffee and two cigarettes. Nowadays, although they no longer offer the cancer sticks along with the drink, the fug in the average joint allows one to secondhandedly inhale.

Talking of cancer, if you’re a non-smoker, may I suggest that you avoid Roots brand coffee, as that is made by Japan Tobacco.
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MyVoice carried out a survey of its community at the start of this month to see what they thought about self-service (counter service only) coffee shops. 16,311 people, 46% male, completed their internet questionnaire. 3% were teenagers, 24% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% fifty years old or over.

Japan is apparently the only country in the world (sorry, I can’t find a definite statement of the statistics) where the Coca-Cola Company make more money (or sell more by volume, or something) with a drink other than their signature fizzy brown bevarage, namely their line of Georgia canned coffee, which are, on the whole, either over-sugary, over-milky (a friend got kidney stones from drinking six or eight cans a day and hardly any other liquids, bar beer) or over-bitter for my taste.

Also note that in Japan there is little tradition of carrying out a cup of coffee from a shop. Even around Starbucks, almost no-one will drink their coffee anywhere bar the shop; I personally can only recall one time seeing a Japanese person carrying a coffee cup onto a train, for instance.

Finally, most coffee shops are still smoking. Starbucks is non-smoking throughout (except for seating outside, if available), but other chains often have perhaps only have a quarter or less reserved for non-smokers, and little effective segregation. However, note the last question, about why people like their particular favourite chain - only 9.5% choose smoking segregation (all non-smoking was not an option) as a plus, at most just a fifth of the Starbucks fans, versus 9% who choose that smoking is allowed, which is again just about a fifth of those with a favourite other than Starbucks.

I seem to have written far too much about Starbucks already! I’m much more a tea and table service man myself.
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