Top 5 weird things I’ve learnt about Japan

With Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net running a group writing project and competition of the subject of Top 5 Things, I thought I’d try entering the competition too with a fun look back at some of the things I’ve learnt through my translation activities for this blog. It’s also a good excuse to summarise some of the sillier posts for the benefit of my newer readers.

5. 43% of wives produce audible bottom burps within their first year of marriage

トリビアの泉, Fount of Trivia, an extremely popular Japanese television program that investigates and creates trivia went out of its way to investigate gas emissions in newly-weds’ domestic life. Did you really need to know that? But did you not enjoy finding out the answer regardless? Sadly the program has finished its run, but my article still lingers around the search engine rankings like, well, one of these gas emissions.

4. Grime and photos give Japanese the heebie-jeebies the most when invited back for coffee

A rather silly look at what both the sexes find a turn-off when they visit their boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s house. Top danger signs for men was dirt – in the toilet, in the bath and dishes piled up in the sink, whereas for women it was photographs of either his ex or a shrine-like over-abundance of snaps of the women herself, with a generally smelly room sandwiched in between these two.

3. The gratuitous kitten entry

Everybody loves kittens, especially in blog posts! In at number three is what cat actions Japanese find the cutest. Tops was cats washing their faces with their paws, followed by rubbing their bodies against your legs and just sleeping in a ball. Purring was a miserable eighth in the survey, the kitty characteristic that I’d have thought everyone loved the most.

2. Buddhist priests’ love ribs

トリビアの泉, Fount of Trivia, conducted another irreverent study, this time finding out what type of grilled meat Buddhist priests prefer. 44 out of 100 meat-eating preists expressed their preference for ribs. But, doesn’t Buddhism espouse vegetarianism? The answer is no (perhaps…), although the precepts for monks and other living secluded lives often includes not eating meat, and even though the original historical Buddha would not accept meat killed and prepared especially for him, he was not averse to tucking into offerings that happened to have a bit of seared flesh included.

1. (^o^)

Japanese love their mobile phone smilies, and regulary fill their mobile emails with not just emoticons as covered by this survey, but now small (and large) animated icons with the latest Deco Mail (HTML) features on many of the new models. Here, almost one in seven used at least three per mail, and less than one in fifty hated receiving them. In addition, over one in three created their own emoticons. This story also features my favourite graph, so I am rather happy to have the excuse to show it off to a wider audience.