世論 What Japan Thinks

@nifty, an internet service provider and portal in Japan, conducted a survey into attitudes regarding Japan. Each question was made as a separate post, so I’ll include links inline.

Demographics

Between the 15th and 21st of November 2013 5,264 members of @Nifty completed a private internet-based questionnaire. No further demographics were provided.

When a friend came over to Japan recently I took him out to a basic restaurant for okonomiyaki (see the pic above), and he loved it. It was a pokey little place with just the one counter/hotplate and 12 seats, the chef cooking right in front of us, ciggie smoke clogging the air, ice-cold beer. He loved it, as did I, as I hadn’t been to such a simple, honest place for so long; before I got married, I used to frequent a local okonomiyaki shop, visiting at least once a week.
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Today’s survey is from not just Japan, but also from China, in a wide-ranging survey from Gallup International conducted into the matters of tourism, food safety, the environment, and the relationship between the two countries.

Demographics

For Japan, between the 5th and 17th of November 2008 1,200 people aged between 15 and 79 were chosen from all over the country at random from residents information and answered the survey either face-to-face or were left with the questionnaire. For China, between the 13th and 19th of November 2008 1,266 people between the ages of 18 and 59 from the 15 largest cities in China completed an internet-based questionnaire.

In the environmental questions in Q5, perhaps surprisingly China is more concerned than Japan about them, but when one looks at their particular worries, Chinese citizens are worried about the immediate threat from airborne and water pollution, this result being reflected in their distrust of their own food products.

I would like to visit the Great Wall of China and see the Terracotta warriors in their home settings, but I worry about being able to find veggie food and about the general level of hygene in the country.
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The BBC just recently published a set of interesting statistics on British abroad and foreigners in Britian. Relevant to this blog are the number of British in Japan – about 23,000 – and the number of Japanese in Britain, 37,293 according to the 2001 census. This figure includes naturalised Japanese, however.