More Sex for Japan

These days there are two main real-time data providers in the financial markets, namely Reuters and Bloomberg. As a Bloomberg user I get sent the monthly Bloomberg Markets magazine, which is the last place that I’d expect to find anything of interest for this blog. Actually with so much to read at work I tend to regard such magazines as junk mail so I usually don’t even bother to take the magazine out of the wrapper it gets sent in.

But by chance, I picked up a colleague’s copy of the April 2006 Bloomberg magazine and the Asia Briefing article grabs my eye, "More Sex for Japan" by William Pesek Jr. It turns out to be a summary of a recent survey conducted by the condom maker Durex into the world’s sexual habits. The Asia Briefing article title refers to the frequency of sex that people apparently have. The Durex survey reports that the global average is 103 times a year, but bottom of the list are the Japanese at only 45 times a year. Second from bottom is Singapore at 73 times a year (any comment DL?).

It's full of other fascinating statistics too. According to the 'Number of sexual partners' section, on average globally people have had 9 sexual partners, falling to only 3 in India. According to the 'Age of first sex' section, the average age globally for one's first sexual experience is 17.3 years, although only 15.6 years in Iceland.

But even the 'Have you ever had any of the following?' section doesn't ask about gay experiences. Doesn't Durex want to sell any of it's products to gay men?