As I have done a few other times, Monday (19 August 2024) I gathered some data on the percentage of people who wear masks at the station. My method was almost the same as the other times I did it: I sat to the side of the station gates (at about 3:00 PM) and counted how many of the first 200 adults I could see pass through the gates were wearing masks. The result: about 30% of people wore masks. I counted someone as wearing a mask only if the mask covered the person's mouth and nose. People with masks pulled down or dangling from an ear I counted as not wearing a mask.
Measurement error is probably higher this
Previous data:
| Date | Mask-wearing percentage |
|---|---|
| 11 September 2023 | 31.0% |
| 19 July 2023 | 37.4% |
| 16 October 2021 | 98.8% |
| ? July 2020 | 93.9% |
Answers to questions asked whenever I post on the same topic:
- The data took about 10 minutes to gather.
- I didn't really make a special trip to do this: It was hot, and the bench in front of the station is in a cool, breezy place that is out of the sun.
- I have written nothing here regarding whether I think wearing masks is good or bad, whether it's useful or not, or whether the results are surprising or not.
by dougwray
25 comments
I mean, it’s one way to spend your day off I guess
Your data shows a clear drop in the number of superheroes primed and ready for action. It is a damning indictment of the current state of society that superheroes feel less comfortable being themselves in public. I fear that this decline will continue and take us back to the dark old days when superheroes had to hide their identities completely and change in secret only when their services were called upon. It’s a disgrace.
Op step two is acceptance.
You don’t need to explain it’s a special trip. Ya hit mid thirties + and suddenly you’re just watching a building getting torn down.
I am more stunned by the foreign tourists you see in Tokyo wearing masks. I am not speaking about S.E. Asians but Westerners. Any data on that?
anything in particular about that 30% that you noticed or is that group just pretty uniform/random across gender, age, etc.? its a surprising chunk considering i dont see anyone wearing masks where im at 😛
I wonder sometimes if the people that do wear masks now are doing for health reasons or is there a percentage that actually wears them to hide behind. Example seeing a young lady the other day outdoors only person wearing a mask in a sparsely occupied area.
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I hope there is a watcher on a different bench counting the mask counters.
This correlates with the largest wave of Covid speed so far in Japan. Too bad the government isn’t taking this data seriously. Thank you.
July 2020 – peak Covid
October 2021 – still peak Covid (in Japan)
July 2023 – allergy season
September 2023 – allergy holy fuck my eyes are burning out of my skull stop already
Huh?
I am sure you are doing other stuff like this, please tell me more. Like when you are going to the supermarket, any special stats you are trying to make out of certain facts you noticed?
Hey, I appreciate the data. People have strong opinions, but facts are always useful.
I think the percentage of mask wearers is higher in the mornings and evenings when the trains are packed and the risk of catching something is higher.
Sometimes in the mid day if I catch the trains I skip the mask if there are very few people on the train otherwise it’s always masks for me.
Based on absolutely nothing but me recalling things in my brain, ~30% sounds realtively similar to what you’d see in the 2010s as well.
The weird thing about some of the comments so far is that they don’t appear to realize that mask wearing was already a normal thing in Japan prior to Covid.
I have an elementary school student who always wears his mask. His grandfather came to pick him up one day, and noticed that the boy’s hair completely covered his eyes. Heh, we couldn’t see his face at all. Much to the boy’s frustration, his parents put their feet down, but not too horrendously. They thinned out his bangs so we can see his eyes. I sighed to myself in exasperation, because neither I nor his fellow students were bothered by this. Let people have their privacy if they want.
Another reason to wear a mask at seeming whim is sunlight. Masks are not hot, to me, but then I’m not doing sports. I wear my mask in crowded situations. I wear it into convenience stores to show solidarity, because the people working there, who need their paycheck, are wearing masks.
Thanks OP. Thought about your posts the other day and was wondering if you had done one recently. Always like seeing the results
Do you get paid to do this? I once had a job counting pedestrians walking in each direction down different city street for the local government to use as data for urban planning. Is this a similar gig?
OP, go back in time to 2019 and do another counting session. I wanna know how much it deviates from the usual seasonal allergy mask wearer numbers.
As someone who’s been in Japan since before Covid, this is the normal scene.
People have been wearing masks here for the longest time with or without covid. Numbers increase during flu season especially in crowded areas like the subway in mega cities. With how normal mask wearing is in Japan, people also wear them for other reasons, like hiding scars or a face without makeup. In winter, it actually does help with staying warm.
I like wearing masks myself. There are way too many open mouth coughers in the subway.
What I don’t like, is people wearing them at work to talk to customers. When I first arrived in Japan with bare minimum speaking and listening skills, seeing the other person’s facial expressions and lips were a big help. But when the people at the Ward office, or even Interviewers wore masks, I often had to ask them to repeat themselves.
Seems about right, probably close to the numbers before Covid
It’s just the right amount for people to feel they’re able to wear a mask if they wanted without drawing attention to themselves 🙂
I don’t know man at this point I don’t think many people even care about mask wearing
One thing I’ve noticed is in restaurants, a lot of women come in masked, have to take it off to eat, but cover their mouth and nose while talking and eating
Example, a girl in Burger King who used a sheet of paper to cover her face every time she talked to the person sitting next to her. Looked like she was on a date and had school or work materials with her so instead of pulling her mask back up she just used that
Thanks for your hard work.
お疲れ様でした。
What city is this in? I’ve noticed difference in how many people where masks depending on the city. Not huge differences, but enough to notice.