世論 What Japan Thinks

goo Ranking recently took a look at what behaviour by friends when they come round to stay the night ruins the mood.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 7th of November 2012 1,049 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.8% of the sample were female, 10.2% in their teens, 14.6% in their twenties, 27.5% in their thirties, 25.1% in their forties, 11.0% in their fifties, and 11.7% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

I’ve done number 3, once in Scotland and once in Japan… If we count company overnight stays, one person who I shared a room with has excessively noisy gargling and left the sink under about 10 centimetres of water.
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A survey by goo Research into mobile phones in bed revealed some rather interesting habits about what goes on between the sheets.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 25th of March 2011 1,818 businesspeople who were members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 912 of the sample were male, 447 were in their twenties, 440 in their thirties, 453 in their forties, and 468 in their fifties. Furthermore, 1584 owned ordinary mobile phones, 107 had Android-based ones, 108 iPhones, and 19 other smartphones.

I am in the up to five hours category, although it’s been more “up to” than “five hours” recently as my wife has got addicted to a Japanese version of Farmville. I never use my mobile in bed, however, as I’m far too tired, and anyway I’ve had my fill of the internet via my desktop before bedtime.
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This recent survey from iShare looked into the Japanese bedroom to find out how couples sleep in Japan.

Demographics

Between the 26th and 29th of October 2010 615 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.4% of the sample were male, 24.1% in their twenties, 35.0% in their thirties, and 41/0% in their forties.

Q1SQ1 is perhaps slightly misleading as I suspect people who sleep on futons often use two single quilts and two single matresses pushed together as double futons are the exception rather than the rule, although I should look for statistics to back up this claim.

Some of the reasons for sleeping in separate rooms were due to a baby displacing the husband, but noisy snoring was also a factor.
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A recent survey from iShare took a look at two things that affect me too, stress and sleep.

Demographics

Between the 19th and 25th of March 2010 515 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.9% of the sample were male, 30.1% in their twenties, 34.6% in their thirties, and 35.3% in their forties.

My stress is probably somewhere around level 3 or 4, depending on how much of a pain in the backside my boss is being… However, I do suffer from utter exhaustion just about every day, but sleeping in after my alarm is a very, very rare occurance, given how irritatingly loud it is!
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People sleeping on the train, or feigning sleep so they don’t need to give up their seat, is a staple feature of the Japanese rail system, and something that I do most mornings too. The worry about sleeping past your stop was the subject tackled by this recent survey from iShare.

Demographics

Between the 12th and 15th of October 2009 568 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.1% of the sample were male, 34.7% in their twenties, 31.2% in their thirties, and 34.2% in their forties.

Despite needing three trains to get to and from work every day, I’ve never actually slept past my stop, although more than once or twice I’ve woken up after the train has stopped and had to fight my way through the boarding hoards to get off. My first train in the morning is all the way to the end of the line, so I have once been woken by a fellow passenger as I was still dead to the world when we got to the terminal.
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I’m sure most of us who have worked in Japan have experienced a colleague sleeping during meetings, so to try to put some concrete numbers on the phenomenon iShare conducted a survey into sleeping at work.

Demographics

Between the 28th of April and the 7th of May 2009 405 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private mobile-phone internet-based questionnaire. 54.3% of the sample were male, 32.3% in their twenties, 32.6% in their thirties, and 35.1% in their forties.

Power-napping, catching 15 minutes of forty winks during lunch break, does have definite benefits, and indeed napping salons have started popping up recently, although I do suspect that due to the short night-time sleep hours the Japanese power-nap is more of a necessity than a lifestyle choice.

I don’t power-nap as I use lunch as an opportunity to prepare articles for WJT, but I keep thinking I should. However, my desk is not sleep-friendly and we don’t have any relaxation space in the office.
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Having previously looked with DIMSDRIVE Ranking at average sleep times, and more recently with goo Ranking on avoiding nodding off at the wheel, this time let’s look at drowsiness with DIMSDRIVE Ranking’s 115th survey – how often one feels drowsy, at what time of the day one feels drowsy, and what one does to counter drowsiness.

I get drowsy about 9pm or so most nights, but I just have to try to endure it until bed time, although looking at the survey it only deals with sleepiness during the day time. It’s quite amazing, however, that at least one colleague at least once per week falls asleep during meetings, or at least closes his eyes and appears to be lightly dozing. When there is mass meetings, mass snoozing is never far behind, although that might be due to the majority of speakers being deathly dull…
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As part of their 102nd Ranking Survey, DIMSDRIVE Research looked at average sleep time. 5,391 members of their monitor pool responded to their internet-based questionnaire at the start of October. In related news, Mutantfrog Travelogue reported on a recent government survey (which I might translate in full later) that showed the average Japanese person wakes up at 6:43AM.

Whether the figures below are for an average weekday, or if they include weekends, I don’t really know. Also unclear is whether time spent trying to fall asleep or dozing in the morning is included. For myself, I’m lucky to get 6 hours on weekdays and perhaps just around 8 hours on weekends. With the holidays coming up, I’d love to get a solid 8 hours kip for a week, but…

Note that women get only slightly more sleep than men – although the average salaryman may come home late from work or the pub after the wife has gone to bed, it is the lot of the housewife to wake earlier to prepare breakfast and packed lunches for her hubby and offspring.
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I’ve recently come across Japan Probe, an interesting blog on things Japanese that I can recommend you all pay a visit. I especially liked his translation of the top 100 favourite historical figures, which you might find surprising.

He also highlights, as does the BBC, how sleep deprevation costs Japan $30 billion per year. I don’t think that sales of these energy drinks make up for that loss! At my office, for instance, at least one person regularly falls asleep during meetings, and morning mass meetings have about 10% to 15% of the crowd nodding off in their chairs.

Next, we subscribed to Cat’s Heart, a cat care magazine which features the occassional reader survey. This month I learnt when 460 readers were surveyed, 62.6% reported their cats can open doors or drawers, etc; for vet bills, a vaccine averaged 5,222 yen amongst the 286 owners asked, and getting your kitten fixed costs 14,448 yen for boys and 21,449 yen for girls according to 190 and 180 owners.

Finally, this week Trivia no Izumi decided to look at if astrologers would tell the fortune of animals. In their usual deadpan style, they first got three identical newly-hatched chickens, gave them three different names, and took them off to get read. After the astrologer had rabbited on for a bit, the interviewer asked what happens if we rename them all to the same name. Next, three eels (I think they were eels) were borrowed from a hatchery attached to a restaurant. One reading later, all three ended up in eel pie. A tropical fish got read, then the aphid in the tank with it, which we were assured would have a long life. The fish promptly ate it. Finally, someone volunteered to read four beansprouts and went on about how one had a great future as an estate agent. The resultant statistic was that assuming their palms got crossed with sufficient silver (3,000 to 4,000 yen for 15 minutes seemed the going rate), 97 out of the 100 asked would do readings for animals.

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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