世論 What Japan Thinks

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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UPDATE: This is an updated version of the original story, as I ended up with a stupidly high ranking in MSN Search and was getting far too many hits from dubious searchs! I also had an email about the article from DIMSDRIVE research, and I felt that the tone of the original article could be perceived as tarnishing the reputation of that company, so I pulled the story and replaced it with this version.

Last month DIMSDRIVE research carried out this survey to find out what Japanese citizens wore during the long hot summer nights. The sample size was 6,904 people with just over 60% female.
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