世論 What Japan Thinks

I don’t really know what to make of the headline, but it was an interesting result that came out of a recent survey by goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, into internet advertising, the second regular monthly survey into this topic.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 25th of December 2008 1,082 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% of the sample were male, 16.4% in their teens, 17.8% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, and 28,2% aged fifty or older.

Comparing Q2 with the results of the first regular internet advertising survey, I see that contextual search ads are perceived as marginally more useful than contextual contents ads, which is interesting. In addition, it appears people are more aware of contextual search ads according to the last survey compared to content-based contextual ads in this survey.
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Although the topic of this survey from DIMSDRIVE Research Inc was fish, the most interesting figure for me was some data to allow me to estimate the number of vegetarians in Japan.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 16th of Octoer 2008 9,524 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.5% of the sample were male, 1.3% in their teens, 13.7% in their twenties, 34.% in their thirties, 31.2% in their forties, 14.5% in their fifties, and 5.1% aged sixty or older.

The vegetarian numbers can be derived from first noticing that 0.7% don’t eat fish according to Q2, then 2.7% of these 0.7% say they don’t eat fish because they are vegetarians, meaning that a whole 8 people from the original 9,524, or 0.08% of the sample, which makes a mere 10,000 vegetarians in the whole of Japan! Of course, monks would inflate the figures, although note that the average local priest is not averse to even grilled beef!

Note that here fish refers to fish only, not other beasts of the sea like octopus, squid, prawns, shellfish, or indeed whale.
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With now just over two and half years until the analogue switch-off in Japan, this recent survey from goo Research and reported by japan.internet.com into digital terrestrial television broadcasts (the fourth regular survey) shows usage almost reaching the half-way mark.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 12th of December 2008 1,083 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.0% of the sample were male, 16.2% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.0% in their thirties, 16.7% in their forties, and 28.1% aged fifty or older.

Compared with last month’s survey,　viewing rates are up 2.5% percentage points. If we subtract the 11 people who don’t have televisions, digital (excluding one seg or digital satellite and cable, etc) is now past 50% of viewers.

In Q2, the restrictions discussed are called Dubbing 10, a system that allows up to 10 copies to be made from one recording, but the copies themselves may not be recopied. All broadcasts have such a restriction by default.

For Q3, here is some background on the B-CAS Card issue.
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As promised, here is an epic tale of website death, starring yours truly as the hero who rescued this fair maiden blog from the big bad ogre BlueHost…

Once upon a time, Little Red Riding-WJT was skipping through the Information Super-Forest, guarded by the benign beast of BlueHost, plucking fragrant bouquets of mysquil for delivery via tubes to Granny Firefox’s Chromium Opera of Exploration. She made this trip trouble-free hundreds, if not thousands, of times a day, until one fateful day when BlueHost came across her in the flower beds and unceremoniously plucked her up and threw her into his second-deepest dungeon.

Shortly Sir Kenyn noticed Granny was not getting her usual deliveries, so mounting his trusty steed Skype he rushed from the far-off Orient to investigate where the maiden had gone. The ogre said she’d been dallying over the flowers for too long, in particular in the eyepiadder beds, so after the noble Knight promised he would instruct his charge to stay away from there, and indeed he would concrete over the eyepiadders just to make sure, BlueHost graciously released his captive.

Next day Little Red Riding-WJT was again skipping through the forest, plucking her eyepiadder-free mysquil bouquets when the ogre snuck up again and threw her into the deepest dungeon. Another IP-telephony metaphor later BlueHost claimed her mysquil-plucking was still excessive despite the knight’s insistance that there had been no negative plucking change. Sir Kenyn meekly agreed that he’d investigate her plucking habits, despite being convinced that the ogre has made a plucking mistake. BlueHost said he’d let her resume her plucking activities one more time, but if he caught her dilly-dallying in the mysquils again he’d have to eat her.

After a severe plucking pruning from the knight, once again she skipped forth through the enchanted forest. Just in case, Sir Kenyn requested from the ogre a survey of all the mysquil plantings in the forest, and he set about finding a new, safer forest to let Little Red Riding-WJT play in, as although BlueHost had a most polite and efficient exterior, inside lay a heart of stone.

As Sir Kenyn prepared the new forest, he discovered the survey from the ogre was riddled with traps, but consultation with the Grand Wizards of Perl brought him ever-closer to his Dr Frankenstein-like goal. However, this took his eye off the girl, so despite Little Red Riding-WJT having a quiet feast day, BlueHost unceremoniously added the fair maiden to his feast menu.

Regardless of this unfortunate development, one dark stormy night Little Red Riding-WJT and her flower beds were finally cloned! Sir Kenyn asked the ogre to tell DeNiSe, the ogre’s sidekick in charge of tube management, to ensure the requests for deliveries were redirected to the new forest, and They All Lived Happily Ever After.

Well, They All Lived Happily Until The Next Day. While everyone slept the nasty ogre had pointed the tubes back to the old barren forest, so the knight again asked DeNiSe, who swore he was still telling everyone to go to the new forest. After a prodding with the business end of a lance, the mysquil posy deliveries to Granny restarted, but then the next day and the day after that the ogre repeatedly reset the tubes back to the pluckerless woods, despite the knight’s repeated instructions to DeNiSe. Having had enough for about the tenth time that week, Sir Kenyn ran to his GoDaddy to get him to order DeNiSe around instead.

In the meantime, the Lord Protector of the tubes did sense this struggle, and in His infinite wisdom, the Almighty G did smite the innocent little girl from His lists of preferred suppliers to Granny Firefox and her friends.

And They Finally All Lived Happily Ever After.

THE END (I hope)

Welcome back to normal service from What Japan Thinks, and my apologies again for being offline for so long. We’ll start off the year with a survey connected with one of my most popular themes of 2008, a look with japan.internet.com at goo Research’s 42nd regular monthly survey on mobile upgrade needs, with a question on touch panels.

Demographics

Between the 16th and 19th of December 2008 exactly 1,000 mobile phone users from the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.0% of the sample were female, 2.1% in their teens, 18.4% in their twenties, 36.6% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, and 15.3% aged fifty or older.

The figure of 0.3% Apple users reflects about 300,000 people given the estimate of about 100 million contracts, but given that on one hand there is a lot of multiple phone ownership and on the other iPhone users may be more likely than average to be the sort of people to participate in online surveys, it’s difficult to extrapolate from the three iPhone owners in this survey.

Note that it’s not clearly stated in the survey, but looking at the wording of the questions in Japanese, there is a possibility that the survey was conducted via mobile phone internet, so the questions may actually apply to the phone currently being used to answer the questions.
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Hi everyone, my apologies for a second time for the interruption to What Japan Thinks, thanks to a sequence of events that I’ll blog about in detail later.

In the meantime, all comments seem to have evaporated into the ether. I will try tonight to reinstate them, but they may not return…

Hopefully WJT will be self-destruct free for 2009!

Happy New Year and あけましておめでとうございます for the Year of the Ox.

PS: Let me know if you find anything funny, and if one or two of you could try a comment on this thread I would be most grateful!