世論 What Japan Thinks

At the start of last month, MyVoice asked its monitor panel whether they read their mobile phone’s manual. They got 12,967 valid replies to their private internet-based opinion poll; 54% of the respondents were female, 3% in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 13% aged fifty or older.

Most telephones come with a telephone directory thickness manual, although usually in A5 size, plus perhaps two other subsiduary manuals. Actually, English speakers have it best, as there is usually a 10 or 20 page appendix with a potted guide to the phone that summarises all the key features in English.

Oh, and RTFM is, for those who might not know, an abbreviation for Read The Friendly (or substituting other F-words as necessary) Manual.
Read the rest of this entry »

Another survey that MyVoice performed at the start of July was on environmental issues and MOTTAINAI. 12,326 members of their MyVoice monitor community successfully completed a private internet questionnaire; 54% of the sample was female, 3% in their teens, 22% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

MOTTAINAI, or to translate, “what a waste”, is a Japanese word cleverly adopted by Wangari Muta Maathai and her Greenbelt Movement, and clumsily, in my opinion, adopted by Japanese businesses in order to flog more tat or to appear green. It may be worth pointing out that another environmental campaign, Cool Biz, has, I fear, dropped out of the public awareness as a real measure, and has become merely lipservice towards environmentalism. One of the train companies I use during my commute, for instance, said in their fortnightly free paper that the company would be supporting Cool Biz by setting the air conditioner to 26°C in most carriages, and 27°C in the lightly air-conditioned carriages. However, it’s cold enough most mornings and evenings to give me goose-pimples in shirt sleeves, and in fact last weekend I checked an in-carriage thermometer and it was reading 20°C in the lightly air-conditioned carriage. MOTTAINAI indeed!
Read the rest of this entry »

At the start of July this year, MyVoice looked at food education. 12,489 members of their internet monitor group correctly responded to their survey. 46% of the sample was male, 3% in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

Food education, or to use the Japanese term, 食育, shokuiku, is a term referring to the promotion of not just healthy eating, but all aspects of a sensible diet, from selecting the food through to enjoying the taste. Apparently last year there was even a law enacted, 食育基本法, shokuiki kihon hou, “Basic Law on Nutritional Education”, to allow such promotion to be carried out by local governments.

I’m not aware of an English version of the information on food education, but if anyone finds a good link, please feel free to mail me and I’ll update the post.
Read the rest of this entry »

Just in time for the start of the real summer season (two months or more of 30°C and more days and nights), at the start of July MyVoice looked at the use of deodorants. They got 12,473 valid responses from their private internet-based questionnaire to their monitor group. 54% of the responses were from women, 3% were in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

If anyone asks me what to buy before they come to Japan, my first recommendation is always anti-perspirant; it is, in fact, the only product I get shipped from abroad. Other foreigners suggest that Japanese brands are not so strong, but I suspect it might just be a combination of unfamiliarity with brands ,and that stick or gel type deodorants are almost non-existant here. I have personally only seen tiny almost lipstick-sized tubes that I presume would be pretty useless for any serious application; most of the sales here are, as you can see, of sprays.

There is a belief (or is it a meme? Or nihonjinron) that the Japanese don’t sweat much; whilst I can’t point you to any international surveys or literature to confirm or dismiss that idea, my personal experience is that they do sweat, and often profusely, as on the rush hour train I will often see people with huge beads of sweat even though they have done nothing more than a light stroll to the station. I suspect one contributor to this is the stupidly over-cooled trains (and buildings, etc), as the constant changing from cold to hot to cold mustn’t be kind to the body’s internal temperature regulators. The headline figure indicates that regardless of quantity of sweat produced, the smell of it is a concern to most. Of course, all Japanese could smell but a quarter just don’t care…
Read the rest of this entry »

With summer soon upon us, MyVoice surveyed its internet community to see what they thought about dieting. 13,710 people completed the private internet-based questionnaire, with 54% of the sample female, 3% in their teens, 22% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties. This is one survey where I’d love to see the results split by sex, but not so much that I want to pay 36,750 yen for the full report!

Of course, whether or not any of the one in five who were dieting really need to is another question; shaping up exercises or even just posture lessons is all the help the average Japanese person needs. I see too many borderline (or even over the edge) anorexic-looking women here; there’s few things I find more off-putting than seeing a woman with less meat on their legs than in a KFC party bucket staggering about in a pair of too-high-heels with toes turned in, knees forward and bum back to counterbalance, half tripping ever other step as their ankles buckle under the strain.
Read the rest of this entry »

MyVoice recently surveyed its internet monitor community to see what they were currently learning. At the start of June 13,584 people completed the private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 3% was in their teens, 22% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties. Note that “studying” covers practicing too.

I’m currently studying Japanese (obviously!), both translation and kanji; if I had any free time I’d join a Go school and do a correspondence course in ペン字, penji, which is the art of writing longhand (or cursive, or joined-up handwriting) in a neat manner. With the roman alphabet, you only have two or three strokes per character, but for kanji with up to 20 or so strokes for even common characters, methods of writing quickly but legibly are very important. My current handwriting, is a horribly unbalanced child-like scrawl. And my Japanese writing isn’t any better – I wish that statement was actually a joke!
Read the rest of this entry »

At the start of June MyVoice surveyed its internet monitor community to find out about their use of internet auction sites. 14,023, 54% female, successfully completed their private internet-based questionnaire. 3% of the sample were in their teens, 22% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

Internet auctions is one thing I’ve never done, although I did have two ideas for businesses there than never took off. The first probably required a partner in the USA or UK for bulk shipping, but would consist of buying Hello Kitty mobile phone straps and other cheap nick-nacks, charging $5 on top for postage, and raking in most of the profit, even if sold for list price, on the overcharging for handling. The second was to open lots of bank and credit card accounts all over the place and get the free cartoon character (or even perfumed) plastic cards and pass books, promptly close the accounts then sell the stuff on eBay. Shortly before implementing the scheme, however, I discovered that this was probably highly illegal and would also destroy any credit rating I might have in Japan!
Read the rest of this entry »

At the start of May MyVoice surveyed the members of their internet community by means of a private survey regarding portable music players. They got 14,913 valid responses to their internet questionnaire, with 54% of the sample female, 4% in their teens, 21% in their twentiesm 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

I have a Sony hard disk-based music player on test, but rather than a product review (I’ve mentioned it before myself, and Gen Kanai has a long thread or three on issues with the software) I’ll review myself. Before I got the machine on loan, I hadn’t used a portable player since perhaps my university days.

The first thing I noticed, for perhaps three or four days wearing it on my commute to work, was that the world seemed different; I felt I was stepping back from reality into a little cocoon that shielded me from some of the – well, I don’t really know what, just a transparent bubble that kept everyone else from intruding into my personal aural space, and to some extent my consciousness too. Once these feelings faded – or at least until I assimilated them as a normal commuting state – and as I started loading the player up with a decent amount of music, I noticed I was becoming a very selfish and intolerant listener. Before, I used standard CDs almost exclusively, and even ripped content was played on a per album basis, and I’d often keep the same album loaded up for days if not weeks at a time, playing it over and over. Now, with 300 tracks at my fingertips I find myself hitting the Next Track button an awful lot, tracks get marked down on a whim, and I find myself seeking out my favourites far too often. Part can be attributed to a lack of functionality in the software on the player; I’d love an enhanced random shuffle mode that took into account rating when selecting what to play so I’d only hear my one star tracks once in a blue moon, and skipping a track before getting past the intro downrates it a bit.

I think I should get rid of the player before it destroys my sense of musical appreciation completely, and buy a 128Mb player that I can only load one or two albums at a time onto. Yes, I’ll never listen to music on that player again.

Meanwhile, back at the survey, the Japanese people had this to say about the matter.
Read the rest of this entry »

MyVoice decided to do a totally unseasonal poll last month, surveying 14,676 people from their community by means of a private internet poll about enjoying autumn. 54% of the sample was female, 4% in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

This survey mentions a book and film called “秋の夜長”, aki no yonaga, “The Long Autumn Nights”, but I have an awful feeling I am falling into a linguistic or cultural hole, as WWWJDIC has an example sentence “秋の夜長は読書にまさるものはありません。” translated as ”
There is no use feeling sorry about it.” I might literally translate that as “There’s nothing like reading ‘The Long Autumn Nights’”, but there seems to be no such book or film on Amazon. Perhaps the true meaning is just to spend the long nights lost in a book or a video? Oh well, I’m here to try to improve my Japanese, so I might as well make my mistakes in public.

UPDATE: It seems that “The Long Autumn Nights” is just an expression, but the Japanese love of putting things into quotation marks was throwing me!
Read the rest of this entry »

Following on from yesterday’s survey where we learnt that the Japanese on the whole will be watching the 2006 FIFA World Cup™ at home, MyVoice also surveyed their community at the start of May to find out what they thought about snacking, perhaps whilst watching the football on the TV. 14,171 people responded to their private internet survey. 46% were male, 22% were in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

The particular type of snacks considered is おつまみ, otsumami, a word that refers to finger food that is consumed with a drink, usually of an alcoholic variety. When exactly a snack becomes an otsumami is one of these mysteries of the Orient; does a biscuit with a cup of tea count? A large slice of cake doesn’t seem to, but how small does it have to be to become an otsumami? An individually wrapped shop-bought cake slice counts but a home-baked and cut doesn’t? Who knows!

For more information about the drinks that might be consumed whilst snacking at home, please consult my earlier translation of a survey into alcohol at home.
Read the rest of this entry »