世論 What Japan Thinks

With horizontal rain hammering on the window right now, it may seem rather unseasonal to look at a recent survey published by infoPLANT on the subject of ice cream, but the market even in the off season for ice cream seems rather strong. Over a week in the middle of January 8,653 people, 66.6% female, self-selected themselves to complete a survey available through the menuing system of NTT DoCoMo’s iMode.

I eat ice cream perhaps two or three times a month, but most of that is either as a fixed dessert item on a dinner menu, or as a small scoop accompanying a slice of cake. During the summer, once every few weeks we’ll buy a cone, and when we go to the theatre we usually buy a single-serving cup during the interval, but that’s about it.

And what is the correct English term for a single-serving cup/mini-pot of ice cream? Cup ice cream sounds awfully like a Japanese-invented term. You know you’ve been in Japan too long when you forget British-English and can only remember Japanese-English!
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Over five days at the start of January, MyVoice looked at that Japanese staple, rice. 10,245 members of their online monitor community successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

My translation for Q3 is not very good, I fear, but I hope you get the general picture! I eat rice almost every day, and at home we use a mix of half white and half brown rice.

I was surprised in Q4 that 3.3% said they like their rice with soy sauce, as not doing it is one of the first points of etiquette drilled into foreigners, so please feel free to print out this survey to justify your bad manners next time you do so in polite company!

Follow this link for more information on Japanese rice cookers.
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DIMSDRIVE Research recently looked at a hot topic in Japan, the recent drastic reduction in tuna quotas. Between the 13th and 18th of December they interviewed 7,149 people from their monitor group by means of an internet-based private survey. 43.5% of the sample was male, 1.0% in their teens, 15.8% in their twenties, 35.3% in their thirties, 27.9% in their forties, 14.4% in their fifties, and 5.6% aged sixty or older.

When I translated an earlier opinion poll by DIMSDRIVE Research on tofu, I postulated that that was the nation’s favourite food, and this survey doesn’t disprove my guess.

Perhaps connected with this survey is my recent examination of a press release by the Institute Of Cetacean Research on whaling. It might be interesting to perform a survey see if people would switch from tuna to whale if the quotas for the former were cut and the latter increased.
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The above phrase may often be heard throughout Western homes a couple of days into the New Year as everyone has had their fill of left-over turkey, but what about in Japan? goo Ranking decided to find out what people fancied eating when they got fed up with お節, osechi, the traditional Japanese New Year cuisine. As usual, there’s no demographic information, and the survey was unseasonably carried out at the end of November.

This site described the posh shop-bought osechi, but most often it is home-made, and in our case consists of miso soup with mizuna and mochi. I fortunately managed to break the monotony with a 10-pack of Mister Donuts (twice!), but I could fair go a pizza myself!
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With Christmas almost upon us; indeed in Japan it has now passed, as X’mas (note the extra apostrophe there that Japan almost always uses) Eve is the main time for parties and the rest. With this in mind, goo Ranking published a survey a few days ago on what food people would most like to eat at a Christmas party. As usual, no demographics are available, but since it’s the holiday season, I hope you can forgive me for not having them!

For me, tonight’s X’mas Eve special dinner was pizza. Hope you had a fun time too!
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Since my favourite delivery food survey translation seems to have gone down quite well (unlike some of the mayonnaise combinations), let’s look at goo Ranking’s survey to find out what are people’s favourite topping on their delivery favourite, pizza. Towards the end of October they collected the votes from a public poll. The top vote getter gets 100 points, and all the rest pro-rated relative to the number one.

My favourite, which features nowhere on this list, is artichokes.
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UPDATE: I have been informed by some of my readers that bukkake may in fact have a second meaning in addition to being a style of topping for noodles. I am currently researching Google to try to confirm this matter; I may be some time.

Last month MyVoice published the results of a survey they conducted amongst their internet monitor group to find out their views on udon. 12,182 people successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire conducted over five days at the start of October. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 20% in their twenties, 41% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

Udon, thick wheat-based noodles, is one of the two main home-grown noodles in Japan, with soba, a thin noodle made from buckwheat, being the second. Personally, I dislike udon, and even more dislike eating out as my Western manners-sensitive ears find the loud slurping noises from fellow diners extremely off-putting and irritating.

I’ve also heard of none of the regional dishes mentioned in Q1.
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MyVoice conducted a number of surveys of their internet community at the start of October, and one of these was on the subject of delivery food. 12,313 members successfully completed the questionnaire, with 54% of the respondents female, 2% in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 41% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

One surprising omission from Q2 is that great Kansai staple, okonomiyaki. When I used to regularly visit one shop (now sadly closed down), they’d always be two or three orders for delivery processed whilst I was eating.

Talking of okonomiyaki, I was watching some English language educational program on NHK a few months ago, and in their random foreigner talking on the topic of the lesson segment, they had a guy walking to work in Tokyo, telling us how he passed down a street with restaurants selling local Edo delicacies like the aforementioned okonomiyaki. NHK must have deliberately left that in to entertain the locals by laughing at the ignorant foreigner.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on research by Cross Marketing Inc regarding people’s views on restaurant search web sites. They interviewed 320 people who had used a restaurant search site by means of a private internet questionnaire; half of the sample were male, and a quarter in each of the age groups of their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties.

This particular segment of the market seems to have assumed the title グルメ, gurume, the Japanese transliteration of gourmet (actually from the French, not English), which is the reason that a number of the web sites listed below start with Guru-.

In my experience, Guru-Navi seems the first stop for most of the people I know; one benefit of the site is that many of the listed restaurants also have discount coupons available for printing out.
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Following on from yesterday’s survey where we learnt that the Japanese on the whole will be watching the 2006 FIFA World Cup™ at home, MyVoice also surveyed their community at the start of May to find out what they thought about snacking, perhaps whilst watching the football on the TV. 14,171 people responded to their private internet survey. 46% were male, 22% were in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

The particular type of snacks considered is おつまみ, otsumami, a word that refers to finger food that is consumed with a drink, usually of an alcoholic variety. When exactly a snack becomes an otsumami is one of these mysteries of the Orient; does a biscuit with a cup of tea count? A large slice of cake doesn’t seem to, but how small does it have to be to become an otsumami? An individually wrapped shop-bought cake slice counts but a home-baked and cut doesn’t? Who knows!

For more information about the drinks that might be consumed whilst snacking at home, please consult my earlier translation of a survey into alcohol at home.
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