世論 What Japan Thinks

DIMSDRIVE Research recently published the results of their 84th Rankings survey. This time one of the questions was on what mobile phone features are really not needed at all. They questioned 5,950 people from their monitor group at the end of June by means of a closed internet questionnaire.

With most newer phones being loaded with more and more features, with a corresponding increase in development costs (you’d scarcely believe me if I told you how much one of the recent DoCoMo 90x series cost in person-months!), this is perhaps a timely survey that may give the phone companies pause for thought.

Note that SMS features on the list – almost every phone has a far more advanced mail client, so the SMS is just there for legacy support. Another strange answer is the wireless LAN; as far as I am aware, it is not a feature that is widely available apart from one or two specialised SmartPhones. Perhaps people were just lumping BlueTooth and infra-red support together under this category?

This poll also raises more questions than it answers. Why is BlueTooth right up there? Does it indicate consumer ignorance of what it does? Why do more men want rid of games rather than music playback?
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Today I will present three ranking surveys for the price of one, all on the theme of water usage at home, all carried out by DIMSDRIVE Research as part of their 85th Ranking Survey over the period of about a week at the end of June and start of July. First is using water for drinking at home, next is water for tea and coffee at home, and finally water for cooking at home.

Japan’s tap water is basically safe, but in the big cities it tends to smell a bit due to the various treatments it undergoes. Most restaurants, for example, serve water that at least has been through some sort of treatment, but what exactly they use in their tea is anyone’s guess. At home, we have a built-in water purifier that we use for drinking and tea and coffee, except for when making a large pot of tea (usually 麦茶, mugicha, barley tea) for refrigerating, when we use plain old tap water. The exact reason for this is beyond me. Our previous flat had some nasty black spots (tar or pitch, perhaps) that occasionally flaked off making filtration absolutely necessary.
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With Japan due back from Germany tomorrow morning (no, I have no confidence in them being able to beat Brazil by two clear goals), let’s look at a recent ranking survey by DIMSDRIVE Research on what people would like to see a World Cup of. They interviewed 4,597 members of their internet monitor group, with 2,383, or 51.8%, male.

Note that many of the sports mentioned already have world championships, so perhaps people mean they want to see coverage of these events, or they are ignorant of their existence, as I was too until I started searching. The links you see below go to existing world championships or world federations of the sports mentioned, or just news of such events.

Note also that the top three involve food either directly or indirectly.
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DISMDRIVE Research released their 81st Ranking Research results, and one of these was a look at what folklore or superstitions people worry about. 4,597 people replied with the single (I think) superstition that they pay most attention to. 2,383 of the respondents, or 51.8%, were male.

This is a fun one for me, as the folk traditions here are often very different from home; I have never heard here of walking under a ladder being unlucky (probably because all ladders get coned off and have two guys waving batons to steer you round the obstacle), urinating on a bee sting seems a very popular (but totally ineffective) antidote, and PET bottles lined up outside houses to scare off cats don’t work.

Note that effect of black cats crossing your path is…umm, I’m not sure any more! Back home in Scotland it was good luck (I think – my memory’s going!) but in Japan it’s bad luck, according to this survey. I remember the Tom and Jerry cartoons where they’d have a black cat causing bad luck, so perhaps that’s the American belief. This random web page says that Japan is good luck, so I am now totally confused!
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In their 72nd Ranking Research questionnaire, DIMSDRIVE Research took a look at what Japanese people said they did before they went to sleep. They interviewed 5,298 people from their internet monitor group, 50.3% male, about their habits at the end of March this year.

You will notice that no-one mentions interacting with one’s partner, even just a cuddle or a chat, as what they do when they can’t sleep. Whether this is an uncommon practice or if this and more saucy answers were weeded out, I do not know.
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With the Golden Week holidays coming up fast in Japan, goo Ranking published the results of a survey on how long a holiday their regular readers were taking. As with most of the goo Rankings, sex and age demographics are not available; as I understand it the votes were though a presumably anonymous web poll. In the results, the top vote score 100 points, with the relative number of votes for the options expressed as percentage points, I believe.

Golden Week refers to the sequence of holidays at the start of May in Japan; the first holiday, みどりの日, midori no hi, Greenery Day is in fact on the 29th of April but it usually doesn’t technically count as part of Golden Week (don’t ask why!). This day used to be the previous Emporer’s Birthday Holiday, 天皇誕生日, tenno tanjobi, a national holiday (the current one is on the 23rd of December), so when the previous Emperor Showa died, they decided to keep the day as a holiday, so they renamed it to Greenery Day.

Returning to the main topic, the three main holidays start on the 3rd of May with 憲法記念日, kenpo ki’nenbi, Constitution Memorial Day, followed by 国民の休日, kokumin no kyujitsu, National People’s Day on the 4th, then こどもの日, kodomo no hi, Children’s Day on the 5th. In my case, work is shut down for the whole week, plus I’ve booked this Friday off as a personal holiday, so I have ten days off. Note that this means that my posting frequency might decrease next week.
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In January, DIMSDRIVE Research interviewed by means of an internet-based questionnaire 1,454 people, 59.2% male, to find out what people do to get rid of a hangover. The Japanese for hangover is 二日酔い, futsukayoi, “two days drunk”, which I think is a wonderfully descriptive term!

I find the whole subject of Japan and drink fascinating, and whilst I’m still to find the one survey that confirms my suspicion that whilst overall alcohol consumption in Japan may be lower than in the West, there are comparable, if not higher, figures for regular drinkers, and more worryingly, regular heavy drinkers. Alcohol abuse is still not recognised here as a societal problem; I’m not some sort of Puritan calling for prohibition, of course, just someone who wishes booze was taken seriously.

As a small anecdote, in one of our company magazines we got a depression checklist, and one of the signs was not wishing to join in with office drinking sessions; for me, these events cause me stress, and paying 4,000 to 5,000 yen to sit in a usually very smokey pub for two hours as people continute to talk shop all around whilst making do with a veggie option that is a poor excuse for a meal is not really my idea of fun; I’d rather be snuggling up with wifey under the kotatsu watching the telly at home!
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DIMSDRIVE Research recently published the results of one of their ranking surveys, carried out in the middle of January amongst 5,782 members of their internet monitor group, 2,752 male, 3,030 female, to find out what kind of cat they’d like to keep as a pet.

This is a great excuse to publish a photo of the top-ranked and third-ranked breeds, Aria and Andy respectively, captured in a rare moment when they weren’t knocking lumps out of each other or aggravating my allergy with their hair!

The number who don’t want to keep cats is not recorded. Note that a Japanese cat most likely mean a mixed breed with a stubby tail, the most common wild and semi-wild cats you see around the streets here.
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In my quest to bring you the rather more obscure and slighly weird surveys of Japanese public opinion, here comes an odd report from DIMSDRIVE Research, who asked 4,551 Japanese of all ages what their favourite meat on a yakiniku (grilled meat) menu was. 44.7% of those who replied to their internet-based questionnaire were male. This survey was carried out last July.

As a vegetarian myself, I have to go for the “None of the above” option. I also must resist saying anything about the fact that so many young Japanese women seem to love nothing more than a bit of tongue. Oh, and if you too want to get away from meat and get some decent tofu and other soy-based foodstuffs, and live in the Kansai area, I hearily recommend “Mame no Hatake” and “Seed’s Kitchen” as semi-organic, semi-veggie eateries. The “Mame no Hatake” buffet, in particular, is quite amazing value, 1,900 yen for a high-quality all-you-can-eat buffet.
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DIMSDRIVE Research asked 4,205 people, 2,129 of them male, to name a great company founder or proprietor, in an internet-based survey carried out at the start of October last year.

Note the date that this was taken. It was before the problem with the Matsushita Fan Heaters cropped up, and before Takafumi Horie found himself in hot water regarding some share dealing. Since this second story is currently under criminal investigation, I will refain from comment, although I do note that there seems to be some element of the population that back Horiemon, and in fact some are suggesting that he will emerge from this scandal stronger, not weaker.

Regarding the Matsushita problem, however, I felt their response was very thorough, especially compared to the recent problems with Mitsubishi truck wheels falling off, and if anything too thorough, as for a month they pulled all their TV advertising and replaced them with simple information spots about the product recall, manned almost every kerosene stand with employees to ask purchasers if they have a National Fan Heater, and had leaflets distributed with everyone’s gas bill.

Why Japan has so many paraffin heaters is another matter altogether; even in my brand new block of flats with the almost unheard of luxury of double or bonded pair glazing on all windows and underfloor heating, the people directly above us own one. Thank goodness our place is also kitted out with a full complement of smoke detectors!
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