世論 What Japan Thinks

The internet, the information super-highway, is supposed to be this great conduit of information by which everyone can gather information on whatever they please. To find out how the Japanese are plugging into these vast resources, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into using the internet to garner information.

Demographics

On the 27th of November 2007 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group employed in the public or private sector completed a private online questionnaire. 78.2% of the sample was male, 9.7% in their twenties, 37.5% in their thirties, 36.0% in their forties, 12.1% in their fifties, and 4.8% in their sixties.

It is not clear from the survey whether just computer-based internet access was counted, or if mobile phone usage was included.

Quite frankly, this survey seems fatally flawed as Q1 does not include Wikipedia (which is itself fatally flawed) as I must admit that for simple factual data I do reference it, and given that is seems to often appear in four in five of Japanese surfers’ search results, to not include it would be an oversight.

If you too want to gather information on train times, NihonHacks recently had an article on how to do it.

Research results

Q1: When gathering information via the internet, what sorts of sites do you use? (Sample size=331, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
News sites (including Yahoo! and other portals)	284	85.8%
Search site (Google, etc)	263	79.5%
Bulletin board	79	23.9%
SNS	49	14.8%
Blog	43	13.0%
Movie sharing site	29	8.8%
Other	6	1.8%

Q2: What sorts of information do you gather via the internet? (Sample size=331, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Railway line routes, timetable search	298	90.0%
Travel	216	65.3%
Eating out	202	61.0%
Dictionary, translation	181	54.7%
Politics, economy	164	49.5%
Sports	146	44.1%
Arts, entertainment	133	40.2%
Technology	113	34.1%
Overseas information	80	24.2%
Other	19	5.7%

Q3: What bulletin board sites do you often use? (Sample size=331, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
2 channel	107	32.3%
Yahoo! Bulletin Board	83	25.1%
Guru-Navi Bulletin Board	27	8.2%
goo Bulletin Board	14	4.2%
livedoor Bulletin Board Shitaraba	6	1.8%
Infoseek Bulletin Board	5	1.5%
FC2 Bulletin Board	4	1.2%
Other	11	3.3%
Don’t use bulletin boards	147	44.4%

For other genres from Q1, the top SNS was of course mixi, with 28.4% of the whole sample accessing it; for movie sharing YouTube was tops with 46.8% and Nico-Nico Douga second with 10.9%. Note that in Q1 only 8.8% used video sharing sites for information gathering.