世論 What Japan Thinks

Watching Aru Aru Daijiten (“Encyclopedia of Living” is the official translation) on television last night, they were talking about diagnosing problems with internal organs via acupressure, that is acupuncture pressure points, but just pressing them instead of sticking needles in. Whether on not you accept the medical validity or not (I personally do not), the program did, and presented some rather dubious statistics to back up their thesis, and to top it all off, accompanied it with some extremely poor, almost dangerous, advice.

One of the figures that stuck in my mind was that from their 40 guinea pigs, ordinary members of the public aged from 30 to 50 or so, 18 had pain when pressing either or both of the pressure points associated with kidney problems. These 18 were then given blood tests and six were found to actually have unusually high figures for protein in the urine or other kidney problems. Whilst everyone in the studio was amazed, to me that was just one in three who was correctly diagnosed, and there was not even the simple comparative figure of checking the other 22 to see if more or less than seven had similar kidney problems.

Next, when they did liver problems, they claimed (with no evidence to back up this statement) that with a simple one-minute massage of three pressure points one could metabolise alcohol faster and avoid hangovers!

With the people from the sample above where they had detected kidney or liver problems, after just one week of thrice-daily massage of the pressure points, they showed that on average these people had lowered their cholesterol or other indicators by about 5% to 10%, but failed to mention if these people had in addition changed their diet or started taking medicine.

Finally, my pet hate as a holier-than-thou ex-moderately-heavy drinker, was that when two of the regulars confessed to starting drinking before lunchtime and continuing until late at night on a regular basis, they were treated almost with respect for being so strong, and rather than being advised to cut down, massage of said pressure points was the recommended and sufficient activity. There was also no mention of the most basic disclaimer like “if symptoms persist, please see a doctor.”

For the benefit of all readers residents of Japan, just in case you’ve failed to notice it, the norovirus is currently doing the rounds; not a computer-borne one, but a real life food poisoning-related disease. Japundit has some advice on preventative methods, and although I’ve got no hard statistics on it, I remember hearing that at the start of the month cases were at roughly four times the usual rate, and since then there seems to have been many, many more cases. It’s possibly fatal to children and aged people, and with no current vaccine, please take care out there! One of the tabloids was suggesting that up to 10 million in Japan, or almost one in ten, could succumb over the winter.

Recently, infoPLANT, in conjunction with C-NEWS, released the results of a closed internet survey into the consumption of supplements. Over two days at the very end of October they interviewed 1,500 people, 750 male and 750 female, and 300 in each of the age groups from the twenties to the sixties and older. This 50:50 sex split was present in each of the age groups too.

A little anecdote – a friend of mine had his blood lipid (cholesterol) level recorded as just over the safe limits (although Japanese safe levels are lower than Western levels, apparently) and all he did way take two Nature Made fish oil capsules a day, still maintaining the same diet otherwise, and after six months his levels had dropped 10% back into the safe zone.
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Back to one of my favourite subjects, Japanese teeth! This time, it was MyVoice who conducted the survey of 13,741 members of their internet monitor panel. The survey was conducted at the start of June this year, with 46% of the respondents male, 3% in their teens, 22% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties or older.

I’m just finished my regular dental check, although this time due to various reasons it was about seven months since the last one, so I needed one filling replaced due to some decay beneath it. All in all, including ultrasonic cleaning, the bill came to just over 3,000 yen with bog-standard Japanese national medical insurance.
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goo Research recently published the results of a survey they carried out into exercise, either taking it or watching other people doing it. Demographics are not clearly expressed, but aproximately 1,000 employed people from their monitor pool completed the survey. About eigth-tenths worked full-time for public or private enterprises as either permanent or contract staff, and nearly nine-tenths were salaried employees. Freelancers and self-employed made up the remaining one and a bit tenths.

Exercise is one of these things I mean to do more of, but… There’s no shortage of clubs, but basic fees start at not much less than 10,000 yen per month or about 2,000 yen per visit, which is a bit much.

As for watching, she who owns the remote has no interest, so neither do I…
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With me on a Shinkansen up to Yokohama for the CHES (Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems ’06 Conference rather than attending a regular health check, it would be quite appropriate to look at this survey conducted at the start of last month by MyVoice into health checks. 13,126 people from their monitor pool responded, 54% female, 3% in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 13% aged fifty or older.

In Japan, I believe the law states that all companies must provide their employees with annual health checks, but the law doesn’t state how detailed they should be. In my employer’s case, every year we get our height, weight, urine, eyes and ears checked, and a chest X-ray. I personally opt out of the chest X-ray most times as it’s apparently a check for lung cancer and TB, but according to reliable internet data, there are far more effective tests for latent TB and X-rays should only be needed to confirm an outbreak, and as for lung cancer, first I don’t smoke, and second, once it’s big enough to turn up on an X-ray it’s most likely terminal. Japan also has the highest number of medical X-ray exposures per person per year and the highest rate of cancer attributed to medical X-rays, two facts which I can’t help feel are connected somehow.

My company also once every three to five years does a blood test, poo test, and a barium meal, plus additional ten-year checks, and also recently has started annual fitness tests consisting of grip strength, bike riding, sit-ups, reaction times, balancing on one leg with eyes shut (yes, really!), and recovery rate checks, which is the test I’m skiving out of today.

In addition, many local councils offer their residents various free checks at various stages of life.
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This slightly broken English in the post title is the catchphrase of not just Osaka’s, but a national promotion to persuade people to view looking after their teeth as a lifelong commitment. I’ve covered teeth in a number of other posts, but the statistical fact I learnt yesterday on a train covered in posters for said campaign was that current 80 year olds (in Osaka only? in the whole of Japan?) only have on average around four teeth left.

The reasons for this poor record are not just as revealed in the earlier surveys, a lack of regular care and maintentance by a professional, but also a large number of dentists who would often rather just yank a tooth instead of repairing it. There’s also more than a fair share of incompetent dentists, of course, but fortunately mine doesn’t fall into either category.

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Following on from my earlier post regarding a survey on smoking by goo Research, I now present a translation of a related opinion poll from DIMSDRIVE Research on smoking manners. In mid-June they interviewed 8,273 people from their internet monitor group. 56.8% of the sample was female, 1.2% in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 36.2% in their thirties, 28.1% in their forties, 12.7% in their fifties, and 4.3% aged sixty or over; average age was 42.2 years old for men, 36.6 years old for women. As further demographic information they also published the occupations of the sample; 2.1% were company director level, 37.3% were ordinary full-time employees, 6.3% self-employed, 11.9% in part-time or casual labour, 3.2% worked for local or national government, 2.4% were freelancers, 24.5% housewives, 3.6% students, 1.0% retired, 4.8% unemployed, and 2.9% in others jobs.

This part of the survey focuses on manners; one of the many things that annoys me is how Japan Tobacco get around the ban on advertising smoking products by instead having a smoking manners campaign instead; be sure to check out the full gallery there! I think any resident of Japan would tell you that it seems that far less than the percentages mentioned in Q8, for instance, actually carry out these points of etiquette. I’m also very suprised by throwing away cigarette ends being seen as bad manners by many more non-smokers than lighting up in non-smoking areas!
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Following on from my earlier post regarding a survey on smoking by goo Research, I now present a translation of a related opinion poll from DIMSDRIVE Research on smoking manners. In mid-June they interviewed 8,273 people from their internet monitor group. 56.8% of the sample was female, 1.2% in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 36.2% in their thirties, 28.1% in their forties, 12.7% in their fifties, and 4.3% aged sixty or over; average age was 42.2 years old for men, 36.6 years old for women. As further demographic information they also published the occupations of the sample; 2.1% were company director level, 37.3% were ordinary full-time employees, 6.3% self-employed, 11.9% in part-time or casual labour, 3.2% worked for local or national government, 2.4% were freelancers, 24.5% housewives, 3.6% students, 1.0% retired, 4.8% unemployed, and 2.9% in others jobs.

One important thing to note when reading these figures is that men tend to be much more likely (almost twice as likely) to smoke, and tend to smoke more, so be wary of quoting these figures directly. If you are interested in that breakdown, either refer to the original survey or ask me and I’ll do a translation of every last statistic.
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goo Research recently published the results of a survey of their internet monitor pool on the subject of tobacco. They interviewed 1,076 people by means of a private internet-based questionnaire towards the end of July, but the survey report does not include any demographic breakdown.

Note that although there is no age, occupation or sex breakdown, given goo Research’s monitor pool there should be slightly less than average manual workers, the sort of demographic that has a higher smoking rate, I believe, so the 23.1% of regular smokers should not be extrapolated to the general population. Similarly, most goo surveys have about 55% to 60% women respondents, and women are significantly less likely to smoke (about 15% versus 50%) than men.

One strange thing about cigarettes in Japan is the uniformity of price; prices for a particular brand are the same across all vendors, from cigarette machines to big supermarkets via corner shops. In addition, the price for a case of 10 boxes is not discounted at all, except for them occasionally throwing in a small gift like a lighter or similar trinket. Beer is similar, although you do get discounts for six-packs, but soft drinks often vary in price as one might expect. Is there some law on price-setting?
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