世論 What Japan Thinks

One key skill that most newcomers to Japan need to learn is how to navigate the train system. To find out how the locals find their way around, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by goo Research into looking up train routes and connections.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 25th of February 2008 1,095 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% were male, 16.2% were in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.3% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 15.8% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

As I’m quite familiar with the train routes around my local area, I usually look up my route on Yahoo! Transit to find the approximate journey time then commit the stations to change at to memory. One option I see missing from the list below, however, is taking a mobile phone photograph of a QR code that contains a web address representing the route. I thought that Yahoo! Transit supported such a feature, but it seems that’s their maps only.

Photo by tantek

Research results

Q1: When looking up train routes, times, etc, what do you do? (Sample size=1,095, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Use route-finding site from PC	975	89.0%
Use a paper timetable, route map	593	54.2%
Use station timetable board, route map	575	52.5%
Use route-finding site from mobile phone	396	36.2%
Ask station staff	293	26.8%
Use route-finding software on PC	127	11.6%
Use route-finding application on mobile phone	58	5.3%
Use route-finding site from PDA	10	0.9%
Use route-finding software on PDA	5	0.5%
Don’t look up train times, none of the above	12	1.1%
Don’t use trains	38	3.5%

In total 1,007 people, or 92.0%, use computers, mobile phones or PDAs to search for train information. They were then asked the following question.

Q2: When looking up electronic train routes, what sorts of services or software do you do? (Sample size=1,007, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Use free route-finding site from PC	883	87.7%
Use free route-finding site from mobile phone	318	31.6%
Use portal site’s route-finding service from PC	182	18.1%
Use free route-finding software on PC	59	5.9%
Use paid-for route-finding software on PC	36	3.6%
Use paid-for route-finding application on mobile phone	24	2.4%
Use paid-for route-finding site from mobile phone	23	2.3%
Use paid-for route-finding site from PC	16	1.6%
Use free route-finding site from PDA	4	0.4%
Use paid-for route-finding site from PDA	1	0.1%
Use paid-for route-finding software on PDA	1	0.1%
Other	3	0.3%

I feel (although I am probably wrong!) that the figure for using portal sites is too low – Yahoo! Japan’s Transit search seems to be the site all my colleagues recommend, but the vast majority claim to use stand-alone sites. Perhaps there was some degree of confusion when answering?

From the above sample, 988 people, or 98.1%, used computer-based route-finding systems. They were asked the following question.

Q3: How do you save the results of looking up electronic train routes? (Sample size=988, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Hand-written memo	711	72.0%
Print out	675	68.3%
Memorise	328	33.2%
Photograph results using mobile phone camera	124	12.6%
Send email to mobile phone using cut and paste	113	11.4%
Send email to mobile phone using software, site function	112	11.3%
Photograph results using digital camera	31	3.1%
Other	44	4.5%