Comments on: Quiz time! At what time does the average Japanese person wake up?

By: Nearly half of all Japanese get less than 6 hours sleep » 世論 What Japan Thinks - Japanese Opinion Polls, Marketing Data and Japanese Market Research Translated into English

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:09:22 +0000

[...] As part of their 102nd Ranking Survey, DIMSDRIVE Research looked at average sleep time. 5,391 members of their monitor pool responded to their internet-based questionnaire at the start of October. In related news, Mutantfrog Travelogue reported on a recent government survey (which I might translate in full later) that showed the average Japanese person wakes up at 6:43AM. [...]

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 01:19:13 +0000

I've heard a few theories, e.g.:

Any amount of sleep is OK as long as it's a multiple of 90 minutes.
If you take periodic 20-minute naps for a long enough period, the body will adjust itself so you don't need any more than 3 hours of sleep a day.

Personally, I feel that my performance goes up when I go out drinking, get 3 hours of sleep and then fuel myself on coffee for the following workday. Of course, it could just be that I don't notice my mistakes...

By: Garrett

Garrett — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 19:57:59 +0000

Adamu, you bring up an interesting point here about eight hours. Sleep is such a tough to grasp topic, as studies seem to show that people who sleep slightly less live longer. (I wonder what other contributing factors there are, though – is it merely sleeping a little less or is it being busier, for instance?)
On the other hand, I heard a sleep researcher discussing an interesting experiment he had done on NPR’s Science Friday a few months ago (if I can track down the date, I’ll get back with a link in case anyone’s interested.)
In this study, undergrads were given a test they were led to believe counted for something academically (I think it was a foreign language test), then split into groups that got over eight hours of sleep a night, six hours a night, and a third group that got plenty of sleep, but was kept awake for two days just before taking the test again. While students who slept less reported longer study times, they did significantly more poorly than those who had consistently slept well.

So, we might live longer on less sleep, but might also be remembering less of that long life. (Although that may be a good thing.) Perhaps it’s a quality vs. quantity of life issue.
That said, it’s time for me to get a good four hours in.