世論 What Japan Thinks

After having looked at rice consumption in January, as a sort-of follow-up, over the first five days of March MyVoice asked their online monitor community about rice cookers.

Demographics

15,947 members osuccessfully completed the online questionnaire. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

IH is Induction Heating, which is… well, this site describes the process in detail.

Note that I don’t know if just boiling a pan of rice on the cooker counts as a rice cooker or not (although I suspect not), or if the traditional rice pan (I can’t remember the Japanese name of the iron pan with the wooden lid) does either (I suspect it might). As a pedagogical note, the Japanese for rice cooker is 炊飯器, suihanki, which “translates” kanji by kanji as boiling rice device
Read the rest of this entry »

Having looked at rice in January, in February MyVoice moved on to bread. Over the first five days at the start of February 13,232 members of their online community completed a private internet-based questionnaire.

Demographics

46% of the 13,232 people were male, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

I eat bread twice a day; once for breakfast usually with just water and sometimes jam on top; at the moment I have some nice cheap Chivers Ginger and Lime Preserve that we managed to find in an import shop. Lunchtime is also bread from a bakery by work, usually a cheese roll and one or two other breads, often sweet, but sometimes they also have nice rice or even tea rolls.

I am surprised, however, by the quite high frequency of bread eating; I would have thought it might have been lower, but perhaps if we saw the detailed statistics we could learn something by cross-referencing age or sex versus frequency of eating.

Incidentally, Tokyo Times had a recent rather entertaining piece on Japanese bread.
Read the rest of this entry »

Over the first five days at the start of February, MyVoice asked their online monitor group about exercise.

Demographics

13,158 people successfully completed the online questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

Note that walking in Q1 implies walking for the sake of exercise, not just walking through the station or on the way to work, unless it is deliberately for exercise, although the exact dividing line is unclear and up to the individual to choose. I must admit to being in the couch potato class; indeed recently due to changing the line I commute by, I’ve eliminated a 10 minute walk between home and the station. Plans to join a gym last Autumn were never realised.
Read the rest of this entry »

Over the first five days at the start of February, MyVoice asked their online monitor group about earthquakes.

Demographics

13,145 people successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

I’ve not (yet..) experienced a destructive earthquake, although living in the Kansai area I’ve heard lots of stories of the hardships resulting from the Great Hanshin-Akashi Earthquake of 1995. I’ve also visited the Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution (earthquake museum) in Kobe which has an extremely powerful recreation of the scenes during and after the earthquake. There is also a reference library there, which includes maps of all the active faults in Japan – the chances are probably rather high that your home too may be sitting rather close to a fault line. They also have survivors of the earthquake presenting various earthquake-related issues, from describing ground liquification to discussing emergency evacuation kit preparation, with translators on-hand to help out if need be.

Since I get a bit of traffic searching for it, I think I should explain the Japanese 震度, Shindo earthquake scale. Rather than report the magnitude as the key measure of the strengh of the tremor as in the Richter scale, the Shindo scale is used to present a more subjective, and more useful to the people affected by it, evaluation of the effects of the quake. The Shindo measures how one might actually experience the shake. 1 or 2 are barely perceptable wobbles, 3 is dishes rattling, 4 wakes you up and some things might dance off tabletops (this is about as high as I’ve experienced), 5弱, jaku, lower is books popping out of shelves, most things falling over, and perhaps a few cracks in cheaply built houses, 5強, kyou, upper is televisions and wardrobes (and perhaps you too) toppling, deformed doors and structural damage, 6弱, jaku, lower is dancing bookcases, 6強, kyou, upper is nearly everything breaking and falling over, and finally 7 is OH MY GOD WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!
Read the rest of this entry »

MyVoice published the results of a survey conducted over five days at the start of February into going to the movies.

Demographics

13,171 members of their monitor group successfully completed the survey; 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 20% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

Recently I’ve been to the cinema rather a lot; perhaps I’d be in the eleven to fifteen times? I think about twice a month sounds about right. As for the films I’d recommend, last weekend’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer was a very enjoyable but rather dark murder-mystery; Pirates of the Carribean, if just for Johnny Depp’s frequent buggering (as it were); and Cars, because I love Pixar! I wanted to ask for my money back after The Da Vinci Code.
Read the rest of this entry »

MyVoice recently reported on the results of a survey into the matter of mobile phones. It may be of interest to cross-reference with yesterday’s translation of a similarly-themed MyVoice survey into mobile phone service provider image.

Demographics

13,252 people from MyVoice’s internet community answered the questionnaire between the 1st and 5th of February. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

The two main problems I find with mobile phones are first, even if you stay with the same service provider and the same mobile phone maker, even just a minor model upgrade can mean that the internal software is completely rewritten, and one needs to relearn the quirks of the new email system or character input methods. Second, new models sometimes see not just a feature rewrite, but a degradation in usability. For example, my old phone allowed me to check what the particular ring tone setting were for each contact group in my phone book; now I cannot. I know from working with other projects that usability sadly seems to come pretty low down in the pecking order when designing software.
Read the rest of this entry »

MyVoice recently published the results of its 6th annual mobile phone service provider image survey. Note that I have previously translated the 5th annual survey.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 5th of February they interviewed 13,352 people from their onlione monitor community: 54% of the respondents were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 41% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

The results here are pretty much in line with what even just the casual observer would conclude about the Japanese mobile phone market, although I would have thought that perhaps as Hollywood stars Brad and Cameron would have had a positive impact on SoftBank’s image, but their television commercials promote talking on the phone, ignoring the fact that most people email, and perhaps news of the rumoured three million dollars salary Cameron Diaz received for one six-hour shoot has soured the general public towards Masayoshi Son’s company.
Read the rest of this entry »

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

Over the first 5 days at the start of the New Year, MyVoice surveyed its monitor group to find out their views regarding foreign language learning. 10,504 people successfully completed the survey; 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

Note that putting Q1 and Q3 together we see that around half of the poplation would like to study English but currently aren’t doing anything about it. You may want to cross-reference the results here with a similar survey on English last year, also conducted by MyVoice.

I’m trying to find a way to tie this into the news today that 7 NOVA “English” “teachers” got busted for drugs, but I’m failing miserably.
Read the rest of this entry »

Over the first five days of 2007, MyVoice conducted a survey within their internet monitor group into the matter of mineral water. This is the third time they have conducted this survey, but the first time I have translated it! 10,732 people successfully completed the private online questionnaire. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

My almost every day mineral water is the below mentioned Crystal geyser sparkling lemon (or sometimes lime), although Suntory’s Tennensui is also rather nice. However, all this talking about mineral water reminds me of a Penn and Teller show on the subject, which also reminds me that I am glad indeed that Penta Water does not feature on the list.
Read the rest of this entry »