世論 What Japan Thinks

It’s coming up to Valentine’s Day, which in Japan means that women buy gifts for men, on the whole, not only for their true love (or object of affection) but also for men at work, although with Valentine’s Day falling on a Sunday this year, chocolate companies are hurting. So, today’s survey from Yahoo! Japan Value Insight is all about St Valentine’s Day.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 10th of January 2010 400 women between the ages of 20 and 39 resident within Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures of Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 100% were women, and 25.0% were aged between 20 and 24 years old, 25.0% between 25 and 29, 25.0% from 30 to 24, and 25.0% from 35 to 39.

The best chocolates I’ve received have been B.B. Chocolat Premier (hmm, they don’t seem to have an official web page), as I do like the look of them, which is just as important, if not more, that the actual taste on Valentine’s Day.
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Today is Valentine’s Day, so let’s have a look at two silly wee surveys from goo Ranking, asking women what they find tough on Valentine’s Day, and what differences they notice in men on or just before Valentine’s Day.

Demographics

Note that the obligatory chocolates for everyone in the office are basically a chore rather than an expression of gratitude, as with many other situations where gifts must be passed, the feelings of thanks have disappeared to be replaced by just a sense of formality.

For your enjoyment, here is a recap of the Valentine surveys I’ve looked at over the years:

• Valentine present reception FAIL!
• Valentine present giving FAIL
• Miserable Valentine’s Day
• Improving your chocolate reception chances
• Macromill Valentine’s 2009
• Macromill Valentine’s 2007

Oh, and Watashi to Tokyo had a list of men’s favourite everyday chocolate snacks.

Heart Warmy picture from Robert Sanzalone on flickr.
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Following up on my look at women’s Valentine gift-giving FAILs, here is goo Ranking again looking at what men were troubled by receiving on Valentine’s Day.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 22nd of December 2008 1,039 members of the goo Research monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The reported sex split was exactly 50.00% male and 50.00% female, a figure that one will instantly see is wrong, so for the sake of argument I’ll round it up to 520 females and down to 519 males. 7.6% of the sample were in their teens, 15.6% in their twenties, 28.0% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 10.3% 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. Note also this question was for men only, as the day is mainly for women to give stuff to men.

Last year my female boss (I hope she doesn’t read my blog!) gave all the guys in the office a huge bar of Wonka chocolate which was a FAIL on a number of counts - too big, too sweet, and pretty disgusting, quite frankly. Wifey has never had a giving FAIL (I hope she is reading this!) and last year I got a cuddly toy and some Hello Kitty boxers.
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It will soon be Valentine’s Day, so to get into the mood I present a short ranking survey from goo Ranking on failures commited on Valentine’s Day.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 22nd of December 2008 1,039 members of the goo Research monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The reported sex split was exactly 50.00% male and 50.00% female, a figure that one will instantly see is wrong, so for the sake of argument I’ll round it up to 520 females and down to 519 males. 7.6% of the sample were in their teens, 15.6% in their twenties, 28.0% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 10.3% 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. Note also this question was for women only, as the day is only for women to give stuff to men.
　
Note that there are two main types of chocolates to be passed - true love chocolates and obligatory chocolates. The latter mostly goes to workmates. More details can be found in a recently-translated serious survey from Macromill into Valentine’s day.
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It’s coming up to that time of the year in Japan where the women may express their love and have to express their gratitute, so Macromill Inc looked at women and Valentine’s Day.

Demographics

Over the 21st and 22nd of January 2009 515 female members of the Macromill monitor group aged between twenty and thirty-nine completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54 were aged between 20 and 24, 155 between 25 and 29, 174 between 30 and 34, and 132 between 35 and 39.

In Japan there are two different types of chocolate that women must buy for Valentine’s Day. The first kind is “true” (本命, honmei) chocolates, the other “obligatory” (義理, giri); the first goes to your true love (or object of infatuation, etc), the second male colleagues at work. As you may guess, the amount of effort and expense gone to for each type varies greatly!

Note that “traditionally” it is the women who give men presents on Valentine’s Day, and they hope for something in return on White Day, the 14th of March. However, from this year some of the chocolate makers have been promoting 逆チョコ, gyaku choko, reverse chocolates, which come in a mirror imaged box.

Two years ago I translated a similar Macromill Valentine survey that you may want to cross-reference.
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I hope you had, or are having, or are about to have as nice a St Valentine’s Day as I have had, but just in case you didn’t, in the hope of cheering you up by showing you some people who had a worse day than you, here are a couple of surveys from goo Ranking on first why friends can’t be lovers (with separate male and female results), and second on women’s and men’s miserable Valentine memories.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 24th of December 2007 1,094 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private online questionnaire. 45.6% of the sample was male, 8.8% were in their teens, 15.6% in their twenties, 29.1% in their thirties, 26.8% in their forties, 10.7% in their fifties, and 9.0% 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’m not sure how many “no answers” there were for Q1, or if married people were asked to recall when they were single, etc.

Just in case the idea of obligatory chocolates is unfamiliar to you, last year Mari’s Diary covered how she feels about having to give chocolates to colleagues.

Photo taken by Kluv32.
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Recently, Macromill Inc. published the results of a survey into Saint Valentine’s Day. They interviewed 515 female company employees aged between 20 and 39 from their internet monitor group over two days towards the end of January this year. In the sample 57 women or 11.1% were aged between 20 and 24, 169 or 32.8% between 25 and 30, 182 or 35.3% between 30 and 34, and 107 or 20.8% between 35 and 39.

In Japan, Saint Valentine’s Day actually incorporates two different celebrations. Before I mention them, note that this day is just for women to give stuff to men; we get our chance next month, on White Day, the 14th of March. One celebration is, of course, the one we all know in the west, giving a present to your object of affection. The second is “male appreciation day”, where 義理チョコ, giri chocolates, are given to men, usually work colleagues, in theory given freely as an expression of thanks, but the word “giri” can be translated as “obligatory”, indicating that most female employees have to pay for chocolates for all the men in the office. Mari Kanazawa covers this issue today in her own inimitable style, as does Shari at My So-Called Japanese Life.

At work there’s quite a fair haul of goodies - there is the standard chocolates (Royce, from our company shop), then some Zunda beans Pretz (I think they are a Valentine gift anyway!), and a huge selection of hand-made cakes by one of my colleague’s wife, whose hobby is making cakes for us. I had a lovely cherry sponge, done to the quality (including the obligatory double-wrapping) of commercial cakes.
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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!