世論 What Japan Thinks

Being just back from my own two-week summer holidays – much to the envy dismay of my co-workers who are, I am sure (I think), really just jealous that I can ignore convention and fly off for a decent holiday – it was interesting to see this recent survey conducted by goo Research into 2007 summer holiday plans for company employees.

Demographics

Towards the end of June 2007 1,080 members of goo Research’s monitor panel aged up to 59 years old and employed in private companies completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Fuller demographic information was not presented.

Depressing statistics, aren’t they?

As another point of reference regarding holidays in Japanese companies, Terrie Lloyd had an interesting article on Japan Today regarding the laws and conventions surrounding holidays.

Also note that most Japanese employees take holidays in the middle of August, around the Obon period, a traditional Japanese holiday.
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Central Research Services, Inc published a report two months ago regarding leisure activities. The format of their report differs from the usual survey results that I translate as first, they scale the figures up to reflect the whole population (the current population of Japan is somewhere around 127 million), and second, they present the data within a coherent narrative rather than just the usual data dump, so the amount of data available is rather limited. It does say, however, that they interviewed 3,000 people aged 15 and over at some point to get their data. The main data worth presenting is the ranking of participation in various activities, based on how many people from the survey group performed each activity at least once in 2004, so although the lottery, for instance, is high on the list, each participant only spends a couple of minutes per week (or even per year, as the end of year big draw is very, very popular), so if the table was sorted by the actual hours spent, it would look very, very different.

Eating out	72,400,000
Travel within Japan	60,800,000
Driving (or being driven)	55,100,000
Karaoke	49,200,000
Watching videos	48,700,000
Doing the lottery	45,900,000
Personal computing (games, etc)	44,300,000
Cinema	43,900,000
Listening to music	42,400,000
Visiting gardens, museums, zoos	40,600,000
Gardening	37,500,000
Bars, pubs, and other drinking establishments	37,300,000
Bowling	32,000,000
Amusement parks	31,900,000
Physical exercise	30,700,000
Picnic, hiking, hill walking	30,600,000
Board or card games	30,300,000
Console games	30,100,000
Jogging, marathon	26,200,000
Concerts, live music	25,600,000