世論 What Japan Thinks

Hi everyone, my apologies for a second time for the interruption to What Japan Thinks, thanks to a sequence of events that I’ll blog about in detail later.

In the meantime, all comments seem to have evaporated into the ether. I will try tonight to reinstate them, but they may not return…

Hopefully WJT will be self-destruct free for 2009!

Happy New Year and あけましておめでとうございます for the Year of the Ox.

PS: Let me know if you find anything funny, and if one or two of you could try a comment on this thread I would be most grateful!

The winners of the 2008 New Year Postcard lottery for the Year of the Rat have been announced, and the winning numbers and prizes are as follows. The number to check is the six digit number at the bottom right of the card. Note that some cards do not actually have numbers…

First prize: 574578

Choose any one from a 37 inch Sharp AQUOS LCD television, a Sharp water oven, a MacBook plus iPod classic, or a foreign holiday from HIS.

Second prize: 957358, 769466, or 397940

Choose any one from an iPod nano, a Nintendo Wii, a Canon IXY DIGITAL 10 camera, a Sanyo air filter, or a Le Creuset cast iron pan.

Third prize: last four digits 9660

Choose any one from a pasta sauce set, filter coffee, Marrons Glaces (Crystallized Chestnuts), some Asakusa boiled beef, a Queen Alice beef stew set, Dalloyau French sweets, some Imperial Hotel canned soup, Yoku Moku sweets, Nadaman restaurant gift set, or Orbis Collagen beauty drink.

Fourth prize: last two digits 37 or 64

Otoshidama stamp set – a fifty yen and an eighty yen stamp, pictured above.

C Gumi Special prize: 812751 or 561101

Choose any one from cardboard furniture set, commuter bicycle set, or a garden decoration set. The “C Gumi” is apparently something to do with carbon offest New Year Postcards.

New Year Greeting Original Prize: 935473, 588104, 520056 or 700871

New Year Greeting Original Ninetendo DS Lite.

If you have matched any of these, go to your nearest post office before the 28th of July 2008 and either collect the stamps while you wait, or apply for any of the bigger prizes. The full prize line-up can be seen here. I haven’t checked my cards yet, but how did you get on?

With the New Year soon to be upon us, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into year end and new year holidays.

Demographics

On the 5th of December 2007 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel employed in the public or private sector successfully completed an online questionnaire. 81.3% of the sample was male, 8.2% in their twenties, 37.2% in their thirties, 40.2% in their forties, 11.8% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.

My plans are sleeping, some housework, visiting the parents-in-law, and going to the cinema; we have tickets for Cha-cha. I think we also have a musical fitted into the schedule somewhere that might or might not be Rent. I have 10 days continuous holidays, from Friday the28th to Sunday the 6th inclusive.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s coming up to the new year, so naturally there are a number of New Year Postcard surveys coming out. This time it is japan.internet.com reporting on one by goo Research into nengajo, New Year Postcards – hey, wasn’t the last one also by goo Research?

Demographics

Over the 22nd and 23rd of November 2007 1,093 members of the goo Research online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.9% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

I ordered the first half of my New Year Cards last night, featuring Hello Kitty in a rat costume, of course. We bought from FujiFilm; if you are still to order, I’ve found an Amazon coupon for a discount on the basic price, free delivery and a 1,000 yen discount off your next order – we used a Cecile coupon, but it wasn’t as good value. Tonight we tried the second half using Kodak, but the web site is pretty useless and we found it impossible to check out and buy the cards!

Instead of the usual graph pictured at the top of the article I’ve got a picture of a mobile phone strap featuring a commemorative Year of the Rat Cat, Kitty chan herself. This can be ordered and delivered all around the world in time for the New Year from the internet’s finest vendor of… ack, you probably all know the sales pitch by heart by now; it’s just 420 yen from Strapya.

Finally, the kanji for the Year of Rat is 子, read as ko.
Read the rest of this entry »

With just a few days to go before the end of November, which means that for residents of Japan planning to send 年賀状, nengajou, New Year Cards for the Year of the Rat, this weekend is your last chance to get a discount for early orders. To see what the Japanese are planning to do this year, goo Research, in conjunction with the Yomiuri Shimbun, performed a survey on New Year Postcards. It may be instructive to look at last year’s survey on New Year Postcards to see how opinions have changed over the last year.

Demographics

Unfortunately little demographic information was reported, bar that the fieldwork was conducted towards the end of October, with 1,082 successful responses received.

For those of you in the USA, or in fact Japan, as they do ship internationally, wanting your own custom New Year cards (or Christmas cards, or any other occasion, may I recommend TinyPrints as a high-quality supplier of personalised stationery, with many card designs starting from just over a dollar per card. Note if you choose to order, enter the code WINTER07 for a 5% discount, expiring on the first of February 2008.

We’ll personally be ordering about 80 cards from 55 station this weekend, and even though the coming year is the Year of the Rat we’ll give Mickey Mouse a miss, instead getting a mix of Hello Kitty and Rilakkuma photo cards. Printing the address on the back of the cards will however be done ourselves at home. Although ordering cards seems expensive up front compared to home printing, once you budget for printer ink, losses due to paper jams, and other required user effort, it’s actually quite reasonable, and the print quality is considerably higher than a standard home ink jet.

Note that in Q1SQ1, the 8% who said they won’t print their New Year Postcards includes those buying pre-printed cards and writing addresses by hand, and those who handmake their own cards.
Read the rest of this entry »

NOTE: The results of the 2008 New Year Postcard lottery are now available.

If you haven’t thrown away all your New Year postcards from this year, dig them out and check the serial number on the bottom right of the cards.

If the six digits are 157788 or 457190, then you’ve won top prize, and can choose from a holiday in Hawai’i, a holiday within Japan, notebook personal computer, DVD recorder and home theatre kit, or a digital SLR camera.

If the last four digits are 5161, 7093, 7485, or 9614, then you’ve won second prize, a choice of local delicacies.

If the last two digits are either 64 or 79, you’ve won the third prize, two inoshishi (wild boar)-themed stamps, which can be picked up by presenting your winning postcards at any post office.

I seem to have won nothing.

The above phrase may often be heard throughout Western homes a couple of days into the New Year as everyone has had their fill of left-over turkey, but what about in Japan? goo Ranking decided to find out what people fancied eating when they got fed up with お節, osechi, the traditional Japanese New Year cuisine. As usual, there’s no demographic information, and the survey was unseasonably carried out at the end of November.

This site described the posh shop-bought osechi, but most often it is home-made, and in our case consists of miso soup with mizuna and mochi. I fortunately managed to break the monotony with a 10-pack of Mister Donuts (twice!), but I could fair go a pizza myself!
Read the rest of this entry »

Just in time for the New Year, japan.internet.com published the results of an opinion poll conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into peoples plans for sending 年賀状, nengajou, New Year postcards for the forthcoming Year of the Inoshishi (Wild Boar). 331 members of their monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.6% of the group was male, 6.3% in their teens, 20.5% in their twenties, 39.9% in their thirties, 23.9% in their forties, 6.9% in their fifties, 1.2% in their sixties, and another 1.2% aged 70 or older.

We finally got our cards posted out this evening, a grand total of 90 for us to send. As for email, I think the most we’ll do is a short normal mobile phone email or two rather than any special service.

Have a great New Year when it comes, everyone!
Read the rest of this entry »

Just for a change, I’ll round up a few statistics that have been recorded over the Japanese New Year.

First, the Red and White Song Contest, a venerable Hogmanay institution in Japan, comparable to Scotland’s dearly missed Scotch and Rye with 80% viewing share, but recently losing badly in the ratings to the commercial competition, in particular K-1 and its fixed (I strongly suspect so, anyway) freakshow fights. Back at the Kohaku, as the Japanese title is usually abreviated to, fronted this year by the Guinness World Record holding Mino Monta (for appearing for 34 hours and 45 minutes per week on TV!) in an attempt to boost ratings. The first half got 35.4% share and second half managed 42.9% in Tokyo and the surrounding regions, breaking a seven year ratings slide. The Osaka area got 32.0% and 39.4% respectively, with two other channels showing fights, namely Fuju TV’s PRIDE and TBS’s K-1 getting 17.0% and 14.8% respectively in the Tokyo area.

This year the number of nengajou, New Year greetings cards, continued their six year slide in volume, due mainly, it seems, to the increased usage of electronic mail. The numbers were down 7.8% from last year, with about 2,052 million being sent this year. Even though this year is the Year of the Dog, and Japan is dog crazy, there was still that quite sizeable slide. Due to a death in the family this year, we didn’t send or receive any, except from people we forgot to notify with a mochuu hagaki or who forgot our notification.

Eight people in Tokyo were taken to hospital due to mochi-related incidents.

New Year’s television was 98.735% terrible. (I may have made this last stat up)

With this year being the Year of the Cat (actually Dog, but I dislike dogs) and since I’m in holiday mode, let’s have the obligatory kitten post…

Oh, and since I seem to get a number of people from Google searching for the phrase, in Japanese the standard New Year greeting is あけましておめでとうございます, akemashite omedetou gozaimasu, A Happy New Year!