Over 12,000 members of the MyVoice online community completed an online survey in August about the role of coffee in their everyday life. The results were summarized in What Japan Thinks. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 17% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties. Overall 89% of the sample were coffee drinkers while only 11% were not. The questions included:

• Which kind of coffee do you drink the most?
• At that times of the day do you often drink coffee?
• How much coffee do you drink?
• Where do you often drink coffee?
• How fussy are you about coffee?

If instant coffee can be regarded as “coffee” then almost 75% prefer coffee in a cup to canned or bottled. This result seems counterintuitive but the blogger has a possible explanation: “Note that the first question describes the most often drunk type, so perhaps those who drink canned coffee on the way to work, for instance, also down instant or filter coffee at the office, thus resulting in the poor showing for canned coffee in the results?”

In the same post, there’s an amusing video of a new advertisement for Wonda Morning Shot canned coffee. It features the revered director Akira Kurosawa, mounted samurai hordes, and a rush-hour train. Now, it’s a great ad, but surely Kurosawa-san has been departed almost ten years now? I’m wondering if a mere actor is involved or whether this is a digital re-creation a la Orville Deadenbacher?