世論 What Japan Thinks

At the weekend トリビアの泉, Trivia no Izumi, Fount of Trivia looked at that most vital of questions, what is cuteness. They gathered together five top researchers in the field who spent seven hours designing the ultimate in cuteness. This character was passed on to the chief Hello Kitty designer for final touch up and presentation to the world.

But before we get to that, they also surveyed the public to find out what they thought Japan’s cutest character was.
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Not having learnt their lesson from the recent natto scandal, another television station broadcast information about the newest wonder food tonight, with even my wife, who has had her confidence greatly shaken by the Aruaru Daijiten fiasco, immediately reached for her mobile phone to add it to our shopping list for tomorrow.

This miracle food is the humble enoki mushroom (can’t stand them myself, though!), and to enjoy the full benefits of its astonishing power, take one plastic pack of said fungus, rip it open, stick your nose in and inhale deeply, and in an instant you will be overwhelmed by…

…the smell of strawberries. Yes, Trivia no Izumi’s back, with other stunning revelations such as a top-class Yabusama – horseback archer – found a Kyotei speedboat the most pleasing modern ride to shoot arrows from, beating off competition from other modes of transport such as a roller coaster and an escalator.

“What!”, I hear you cry, “aren’t all Buddhist priests supposed to be vegetarians?” The key word is of course supposed. The original Buddha, Shakyamuni, apparently was not, as is popularly believed, vegetarian, but instead just forbade people who would offer him food from killing an animal on his behalf. If he visited a family with a mutton curry in the pot, he would eat it if offered, or so it is recorded.

However, the various schools have adopted their own particular set of rules for their monks and priests, and most do (presumably) prescribe a vegetarian diet. And no alcohol of course.

Bearing this in mind, Triva no Izumi (Fount of Trivia) decided to ask 100 meat-eating priests what their favourite kind of 焼肉, yakiniku, grilled meat, beef in particular, was. What percentage of the total number of priests asked admitted to meat-eating is sadly not recorded. I have also previously translated another survey on the general population’s favourite grilled meat.
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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.

Watching Trivia no Izumi tonight, I saw this rather entertaining optical illusion, assuming your browser chooses a suitable Japanese font:

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Or going uphill:

ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏ーナマ杏

In further trivia news, by harnessing the power of 200 standard fire extinquishers, you can generate enough upthrust to lift a man a whole two centimetres.

Trivia no Izumi has a silly wee survey they conducted with 100 kids aged around 6 or 7 I think. The idea was that their mothers gave them 10 yen to buy a sweetie from a shop, but the owner of the shop fumbled the coin dropping it into a box only to pull out a 100 yen and 500 yen coin, asking the kid to choose which one of the two he or she dropped. Apparently this is based on a famous children’s tale. Of course, all the children who lied were later being told off by their mother and went back to the shop to fix everything up.

The final result, as you can see from the graph to the right, is that 63 out of the 100 children were honest enough to admit that it was neither of these coins that they dropped; 29 said it was the 100 yen, 7 chose the 500 yen, and one kid with a promising career ahead as a yakuza (or a politician, I suppose) said both were his.

The hidden cameras captured the kids mulling over their thievery, with the most enterprising soul claiming the 100 yen first, going out to the Kinder Egg-like toy vending machine (what do you call them?) only to find it required 200 yen, so he returned inside and said it was actually the 500 yen coin he had dropped…

Tonight’s Trivia no Izumi had a viewer writing in asking what was the best way to conduct oneself on Saint Valentine’s Day in order to improve one’s chances of getting chocolate from a woman – remember that in Japan St Valentine’s Day is gifts from women to men only.

First up they asked 500 men what they would do, and got a panel of 100 women to vote on each of the activities to see if they agreed it might improve their chances. Amongst the collected suggestions were talking in a loud voice, working a bit harder or conducting oneself more lively, gelling or otherwise styling one’s hair, and acting cool. Each of these options garnered a mere handful of votes from the female panelists, the best score being an insignificant 7 out of 100, proving that in Japan too, men are from 火星 and women are from 金星 (Mars and Venus, of course; literally the fire and gold planets respectively).

So, taking a different tack, they enlisted the help of four female psychologists to try to find out what they thought men should do. After a three-hour exchange of views, the collected opinion on how men can increase their chance of getting Valentine’s chocolates was simply to leave your bag open by your desk over lunch or other break time, so your secret admirer could silently slip the prezzie in without fear of a confrontation or rejection.

If you hear about a massive increase of thefts from briefcases next week, you know who to blame!

Trivia no Izumi (Fount/Spring of Trivia) outdid itself tonight, with a survey to find out when people who had been married for three years first heard their wife pass gas! They interviewed 1000 Japanese husbands by means of an internet poll, and as you can see in the pie chart on the right, almost half the wives (43%) couldn’t keep it in for more than a year. 29% first let rip in the second year, 16% avoided a bottom burp until their third year, and 12% of husbands have been spared their wives’ anal emissions.

For good measure, this segment of the show also had face-to-face interviews with some of the husbands describing the how and where of their wives’ flatulance, accompanied by their wedding photos, leaving their neighbours in no doubt who they were talking about!

To finish up this item of trivia, they persuaded one of the wives who had never passed gas in front of her husband to try to do it, so their hidden cameras could capture this moment for posterior-ity…

Oh, and I certainly will not tell you what category my wife falls into!

This week’s silly survey, once again from Trivia no Izumi, took 100 mongrels and 100 owners, and when they went out for a walk, the owner fell over ill and hoped Lassie would come home and drag someone out to rescue their dying master. Of course, most people brimmed with confidence regarding their dog’s intelligence, but quite unsurprisingly to me, all failed miserably. A few dogs did demostrate concern, I thought, but then again others just took the chance to have a free run-around.

First off is Trivia no Izumi (“The Fountain of Trivia”), probably my favourite program on Japanese TV as it deadpans its way through often very silly trivia, with many exceptionally-well conceived little films to explain the stories. There’s a very famous book and comic book and web page and film and TV series and cuddly toy and kitchen sink, The Train Man (Densha Otoko), which traces the story (probably true, on the whole) of a guy after he helps a woman being hassled by a drunk. So, Trivia no Izumi decided to put the story to the test, by setting up a situation where a typical Akihabara geek encounters a young woman being harrassed by some middle-aged guy. So, all these pasty-faced weeds encountered a woman being verbally abused, and we got to watch as the guys tried to screw up enough courage to intervene. Much to my surprise, but then again, since they all had no doubt seen Densha Otoko and knew the story, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, of the 100 guys (including one in a Sailor Moon-like suit!) that encountered the situation, 69 intervened to try to protect the woman. Rather a heartening result, I thought!

Next stat off the telly was from London Boots. It’s too complicated to explain, but basically they get 10 male comedians (mostly) and get 100 random women between 18 and 45 to rank them in various categories.
This week’s show was to select who looks to be of the least calibre (or least classy). The “winner” was GEKIDAN Hitori (a stage name that roughly translates to “one-man theatre troupe”, and who, by sheer coincidence, seems to appear in the TV version of Densha Otoko!) and amongst the reasons that people gave for choosing him, was that he looked like the sort of person who’d post anonymously to 2 Channel with a positive review of himself. When presented with this opinion on the show, he did in fact admit to making a posting just like that on another star’s home page!

And now to the point of this post – the comment about pumping yourself anonymously (ooh-er missus) rung true a bit with me – I must say I have been tempted to do that with this blog at the various blog aggregating sites. But no, I want to see how, or even if this blog can float up the rankings without resorting to cheap tricks.