世論 What Japan Thinks

At the start of February MyVoice performed a survey of their internet monitor group to find out what people thought about learning English. 16,057 people, 46% male, completed an internet-based questionnaire. 3% of the respondents were teenagers, 23% were in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

Teaching English is a huge business in Japan. Actually, I would argue that it is not learning English, it’s being seen to be learning, or just the buzz of hanging around foreigners that is popular here. One of my wife’s pals, for instance, has been going to various classes and homestays for at least ten years, yet her English is still barely useable; she just seems to be feeding her fantasy of getting a gaijin boyfriend.

I’m also a bit surprised that amongst three in four reckon that English lessons should start before the end of primary education. Although the earlier one starts learning a language the better, on the whole, there are more foreign languages than just English!
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MyVoice carried out a fun survey of their MyVoice internet community at the start of December last year to find out their views on potato crisps. 14,846 people completed the internet-based questionnaire. 58% were female, 4% in their teens, 23% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 23% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties (was no-one older than that?).

I really love Japanese crisps; there is a huge variety of flavours, and Calbee especially put out lots and lots of special limited edition bags. One series that started about two years ago was plain flavour, but salted with salt from various parts of the country. Okinawa’s Ishigaki is the only one I can clearly remember, although they did also have one from Kyushu and one from Hokkaido. Another great series, where they release two new snacks (corn or other starch shapes rather than standard potato crisps, I suppose) every six months is still ongoing; they’ve had ume flavour (sour plums), soy beans, onion and pumpkin, to name the ones that spring to mind, all accompanied by very imaginative advertising. They’re difficult to find, but well worth picking up. We also have two bags of more normal crisps sitting around awaiting eating; one is in the international cuisine series, an Italian (allegedly) basil and cheese flavour, and the other is as pictured above, 梅かつお, ume-katsuo, sour plums and bonito fish flakes, which will probabaly be as revolting as it sounds. However, the package design is excellent – note the plum flowers, with the release of this product timed to coincide with the plum blossoms.

Note that a standard bag of crisps weighs in at about 65 to 80 grammes and costs a little over 100 yen, although the supermarkets I frequent often have one or two flavours on special offer of 99 yen a bag. Imported stuff like Kettle Chips can cost well over 400 yen each, although last month I was lucky enough to find some Canadian crisps on clearout sale for 100 yen at my local supermarket.
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Yesterday we looked at St Valentine’s Day in Japan; today we’ll move on to White Day. Last year, MyVoice surveyed 13,295 members (5,573 or 42% male) of their internet community to find out what they thought of the uniquely Japanese White Day. The age breakdown for this survey was 5% in their teens, 23% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 22% in their forties, and 11% aged fifty and over.

White Day is a uniquely Japanese event, as far as I am aware. After Valentine’s Day ended up as a day for only women to give presents for men, in order to redress the balance, and of course increase sales of chocolates, White Day was dreamed up, the chance for men to buy a present, usually white chocolate, thus the name, in return for any they may have received the month before.
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Since Valentine’s Day is looming large on the horizon, let’s take a look at a survey of the MyVoice community about how their Valentine’s day was last year. They received 15,003 replies to their internet questionnaire, with 57% or 8,571 of the respondents female. Almost 40% of the sample size was in their thirties, and in addition 5% were teenagers, 24% in their twenties, 22% in their forties, and 11% aged fifty and over.

First, a quick background on St Valentine’s Day in Japan; on this day, the women buy men presents only – the men’s turn comes around on White Day, March 14th (and I’ll be presenting a translation of a similar survey on that topic presently) – but they do not buy for their love only, they should also buy for their bosses, colleagues, and others, this being another example of the formalised tipping that goes on in Japan.
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MyVoice conducted a survey into the use of MP3 players, especially in relation to Podcasting amongst 15,525 members (60% female) of their MyVoice community at the start of November.

I’m not much of a Podcast fan myself (although I have an idea for one for here…) nor a portable player owner, so I have never got into the whole idea at all, so I suppose I’m glad to see that four in five are in some degree of ignorance of the whole subject, and, barely four in one hundred have actually listened to one! Comparing the figures for Japan with those for other countries may be an interesting line of research, however, which I should do sometime soon. In fact, I am thinking of writing a regular column on survey analysis, so watch this space to see what develops.
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Forgive the horrendously punny headline with a rather naff neologism, but MyVoice recently conducted a survey of their MyVoice internet community here in Japan to find out their views regarding Social Networking Services (SNS). 15,537 people, 60% female, completed the web-based opinion poll, with almost four in ten of the respondents being in their thirties.

Speaking personally, I’ve never really been into online communities, and even when I seriously played MMRPGs, I kept friendships at purely functional levels in-game, and although I was more outgoing on message boards, I never moved to private messaging or email, let alone anything more serious. I get the impression that mixi and others do appeal to the demographic that are looking for “anything more serious”, though! It’s interesting that people would much, much prefer to invite real-life friends, though.
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MyVoice conducted a web-based opinion poll amongst the 12,311 members of their internet community, of whom 57% were female, to find out their opinions about keeping pets. Given that most of the pet shops I see seem to be 80% dogs and dog-related items, I’m very suprised to see that cats are scoring so highly! Perhaps it’s just that cats are easier to obtain from friends than dogs?

Q1: Do you currently keep a pet at home?

Yes	39.3%
Plan to get one in the near future	0.9%
I want to keep one sometime	18.6%
I’ve no plan to get one	41.2%

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Despite being a nominally Buddhist and/or Shinto nation, Japan has warmly embraced the Western secular spending spree festival we call Xmas, as well as retaining its traditional New Year shrine and/or temple visiting superstition.

MyVoice conducted a web-based opinion poll of 15,572 members of its internet community at the start of this year to see how they spent the 2004-2005 holiday season. The survey participants were 46% male, and over a third in their thirties.

Q1: How did you spend the New Year? (Multiple answer)

Spent with family	79%
Hatsumode (visit to temple)	40%
Gathered with relatives	25%
New Year greetings	23%
Went back to family home	21%
Ate out	17%
New Year sales	17%
Bought a lucky bag	13%
Went to film, theatre, concert, theme park, etc	6%
Went to play at friend’s house	6%
Domestic travel	5%
Overseas travel	1%
Other	7%
No answer	0.03%

Note that the 40% is low according to other polls, but Hatsumode does not officially finish until the 7th of January, after the end of the polling dates, and unofficially people will continue to perform what they consider to be Hatsumode until perhaps the end of January.
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Last December, MyVoice carried out a survey about brushing teeth. In Japan, dentist skill, and dental hygiene, or lack thereof, is often a subject of ridicule by the foreign contingent, but I seem to have been lucky and found a very good dentist. Actually, if it hadn’t been for my Japanese dentist and all the work he did (yes, I have British teeth) I don’t think I’d have had the confidence to meet my wife.

They sought the opinion 16,013 people via a web-based survey from the internet community “MyVoice”, of whom 42% were male, and found, amongst other things, that not many people at all attend regular check-ups.

Q1: Each day, how many times do you normally brush your teeth?

Don’t usually do so	1%
Once	25%
Twice	53%
Thrice	19%
Four or more times	2%

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My Voice conducted a web-based survey of their registered users regarding home security issues. There seems to be a lot of worry about burglary in particular.

The survey was conducted at the start of October, with 16,346 respondents. 41% were male, and 4% teenagers, 23% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 23% in their forties, and 11% fifty and over.

Q1: How uneasy do you feel about public order and crime around the area where you live? (Sample size=16,346)

I feel uneasy	17.0%
I feel a little uneasy	51.4%
I don’t really feel uneasy	27.4%
I don’t feel uneasy at all	4.1%

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