Most Japanese kids can touch creepy-crawlies

By ( June 30, 2010 at 23:42) · Filed under Lifestyle, Polls

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As a kid could you touch insects easily? graph of japanese statisticsOne of the hobbies of Japanese kids in the summer is collecting stag beetles and their friends, so I was interested to see this recent survey from iShare looking at insects.

Demographics

Between the 2nd and 7th of June 2010 482 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were male, 29.9% in their twenties, 33.8% in their thirties, and 36.3% in their forties.

When I was a kid, a ladybird was about the only insect I could cope with, so coming to Japan and finding stuff like massive cockroaches or even the passive cicida fair gives me the willies. It’s cool to see a stick insect or praying mantis in my garden, but the only touching I’ll do is with a rolled-up newspaper. Fortunately my wife can cope, so when any good insects enter the house, she’s on hand to lift them out. Conversely, she’s petrified of wasps, but perhaps my sadistic streak comes through as I enjoy squirting them with fly spray.

Note, insects were defined for the purpose of this survey as three-segmented creatures with feelers in their head part and three pairs of legs in their chest part. Poisonous or stinging creatures like wasps were excluded.
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Japanese love fireflies, hate cockroaches

By ( October 1, 2007 at 23:40) · Filed under Lifestyle, Polls

Are you interested in insects? graph of japanese statisticsOne thing I feel is very different since coming to Japan is that the insect population is totally different from at home; there we had bees, flies and bluebottles, caterpillars and midges; in our garden now we have praying mantises, crickets, cicidas, big dragonflies, stink bugs, asian tiger mosquitoes(vicious wee black things that bring me out in big allergic bumps) and of course the occasional cockroach, although those do not last long. To find out what the Japanese think of all these various creepie-crawlies, MyVoice conducted a survey on insects.

Demographics

Over the first five days of September 2007 13,734 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

In Q7, I wonder if most westerns are suprised that the Japanese see themselves as ants much more than as bees. Perhaps this is because the word for bee, hachi, covers (I thinks…) not just the honey bee, but wasps and hornets too.

I’ve never actually seen a firefly myself; the closest I come is passing through 蛍池, Hotaru Ga Ike, Firefly Pond, every day, but whatever water-based insect feature that may have been there in the past has, I suspect, long ago been concreted over.
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