世論 What Japan Thinks

With the IOC decision this weekend, DIMSDRIVE Research published their survey on 2020 Olympics and bid activities, finding that although one in three are ambivalent about the whole affair, three to one of the remaining two-thirds favour it.

Demographics

Between the 6th and 19th of August 2013 7,311 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.8% of the sample were male, 4.6% were in their teens and twenties, 16.4% in their thirties, 31.7% in their forties, 26.9% in their fifties, 14.9% in their sixties, and 5.6% aged seventy or older. Unfortunately, there was no breakdown of the area of residence of the respondents, but DIMSDRIVE usually has around 40% from the Tokyo and surrounding Kanto area.

I’m personally in favour of the bid, partially out of a desire to feel schadenfreude towards those I find are campaigning against Tokyo due to personal dislike of Japan or due to excessive Fukushima-related scaremongering. Indeed, I suspect that the deciding factor will be whether science can triumph over nuclear irrationality, but I also worry that the Japanese team will not be very good at getting the scientific, factual case across.
Read the rest of this entry »

With the London Olympics opening at the weekend, now is a good time to look at this survey from Macromill Research into said London Olympics.

Demographics

Over the 20th and 21st of June 2012 500 members of the Macromill monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. The sample was exactly 250:250 male to female, and 25% in their twenties, 25% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 25% in their fifties.

I’ll probably watch nothing more than the highlight shows, myself, and perhaps the finals of the short-track athletics.

Looking at the list below, from what I know Kohei Uchimura should easily take gold in the men’s gymnastics, but Kosuke Kitajima is perhaps going to struggle to get gold. Koji Murofushi is over the hill, I think, but the women’s football team should get some colour of medal, although I suppose it depends on who they end up playing against in the knock-out stages.
Read the rest of this entry »

With the Winter Olympics due to open on the 12th (or 13th Japan time), here’s a timely survey from iShare into the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Demographics

Between the 19th and 22nd of January 2010 497 members of the CLUb BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.8% of the sample were male, 33.2% in their twenties, 30.4% in their thirties, and 36.4% in their forties.

There’s been two interesting bits of news about Japanese athletes: first, Miho Takagi, the 15 year old speed skater with the unfortunately-designed outfit, has been mentioned on the news as much regarding her chance to be able to use English as her actual skating, then a lead story on one channel today was Kazuhiro Kokubo, the halfpipe snowboarder, getting banned from Japan’s welcoming ceremony for being sloppy-dressed at Narita airport, having – shock-horror – a loose tie and his shirt tails hanging out.

The Olympic committee have set a target of 10 medals for Vancouver, but 85% think Japan will get four or less…
Read the rest of this entry »

With the Olympics over for another four years and with Japan getting a reasonable haul of medals, Macromill performed a survey into post-Olympic views.

Demographics

Over the 25th and 26th of August 2008 516 members of the Macromill Monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female in each age group; 24.8% were in their twenties, 25.2% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, and 24.8% in their fifties.

I didn’t watch much of the Olympics, but for me the most moving moments were Usian Bolt winning his two individual medals; celebrating the 100 metres win 10 metres before the finish line, then pulling out all the stops on the 200 metres to win by the proverbial mile.

Also, just today I read that Kosuke Kitajima, the double-double gold medal swimmer, was voted best beerist for knocking back a pint or two in celebration!
Read the rest of this entry »

First, a quick apology for no post yesterday, but I was in transit and away from a free internet connection, and on top of that the site seemed to have crashed… Hopefully I can post to my usual schedule for the rest of the week.

Since I didn’t have a decent internet connection, this is a survey from a couple of weeks ago conducted by the Nippon Research Council into olympic sponsorship and olympic viewing intentions.

Demographics

Between the 30th of May and the 4th of June 2008 1,200 members of the NRC monitor panel resident in the Tokyo city area (Tokyo city, Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa) and the Keihanshin area of Kansai (Kyoto city, Osaka city and Hyogo) completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Sex and age breakdown was not noted.

Note that Panasonic and National are both brands of Matsushita Electric Industrial, but at the AGM of shareholders on Friday the 20th of June 2008 the board got a motion officially approved to change the company name to Panasonic and to kill off the National brand (used mostly for domestic appliances and other white goods), unifying everything worldwide under the Panasonic banner.

It’s all a bit depressing that the two best-known sponsors are suppliers of highly-sugared empty calories and fat-laden burgers, hardly the image of the ultimate in human physical achievement.
Read the rest of this entry »

This is my first translation from JR Tokai Express Research, apparently part of the Central Japan Railways group of companies, and it’s a very topical subject, a look at what people are thinking about regarding the upcoming Turin Olympics. They interviewed 436 people by means of an internet questionnaire over four days at the start of February, although it is not clear how they collected this sample. 110 people were in their twenties, 111 in their thirties, 110 in their forties, 110 in their fifties and 95 ages sixty or over. The numbers for each sex is not given.

Although the host city’s name in English is Turin, the Japanese use (as would be expected, of course) the Italian pronunciation as the guide for adopting it into Japanese, thus Torino. As one of these “You know you’ve been in Japan too long…” moments, I’m familiar with the locations of Torino, Firenze, Munchen, etc, but occasionally I have to pause to translate Vienna and Naples in order to understand where they are. Mind you, back when I was a kid, and in fact up until I was about 25 years old or so, I was under the impression that Ibiza and Eye-bee-tha were two totally separate places.
Read the rest of this entry »