From kimono to keitai; research Japanese facts and figures through translated opinion polls and surveys.
I went on Saturday to the opening day of the new movie, “My Darling is a Foreigner“, a mostly Japanese-language film of the best-selling manga comic series by Saori Ogura, featuring Ms Ogura and her husband Tony Laszlo, and their life together as an international couple in Japan. I’ve read most of the books (there’s even an English translation out now) so I went with high hopes.
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This rather short survey from goo Ranking, in conjunction with the Mainichi Shimbun, into staggering long holidays (certainly not staggeringly-long holidays!) found quite a surprising (to me at least) amount of opposition to spreading the two annual five-day spring and autumn holidays across a number of weeks so that different regions of the country are on holiday at different times.
Between the 12th and 14th of March 2010 1,060 members of the goo Research monitor aged 20 or older completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Further demographics information was not provided.
I’m all for the idea as currently everything is so busy for one week, with traffic jams and airlines, hotels etc charging a premium just because they, so I just end up staying at home.
As with a lot of these surveys, I cannot really figure out the mindset of these people who oppose the idea.
Note that I suspect that the don’t knows and can’t says have been eliminated from the below results.
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A recent survey from iShare looked into the distance between men and women in relationships. The title is not very exciting, but as is often the case for iShare, the questions and results were both thought-provoking.
Between the 18th and 23rd of March 2010 901 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.8% of the sample were male, 29.6% in their twenties, 33.2% in their thirties, and 37.2% in their forties.
For me, I’d be level 3 for Q1, L4 for Q2, L5 for Q3 and Q4, L3 for Q5 and L4 for Q6.
I’d like to say that women should drive on daates as I do get a bit fed up not being able to look at the scenery!
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With Panasonic due to start selling their 3D Viera on the 23rd of April, this recent survey from goo Research was on television in general, but the short report on japan.internet.com focused on the timely 3D aspect.
Between the 18th and 20th of March 2010 1,079 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.4% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 15.9% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 12.2% aged sixty or older.
As a cross-reference, you might like to look at an earlier survey from iShare on the same subject.
I’m not interested in 3D television, myself. I did notice a couple of days ago in central Osaka the local cable company were promoting their upcoming 3D broadcasts, and there was quite a long queue in front of the demostration stand, but perhaps people were just lining up for whatever freebies they were handing out…
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This recent survey from goo Ranking into the iPhone turned up not only an interesting figure on penetration of the device amongst SoftBank users, but also a pretty impressive high level of desire for Apple’s new iPad.
Between the 24th and 27th of March 2010 1,084 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.3% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 15.3% in their fifties, and 12.4% aged sixty or older.
I certainly don’t want an iPad, but I can see it doing quite well in Japan, although the size is just slightly too large for usage on a commuter train, especially with having to hold it up for a reasonable amount of time. Perhaps one of the most popular accessories we’ll see in Japan is a lap stand?
And don’t ask me why one person didn’t know whether or not they had an iPhone…
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A recent survey from iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com into online shopping failures by women found few actually complained to the shop about their problems.
On the 23rd of March 2010 300 female members of the iBridge monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 21.3% were in their twenties, 37.0% in their thirties, 26.7% in their forties, 9.3% in their fifties, and 5.7% in their sixties.
Even though she will often complain about other things, the few times my wife has had problems with online ordering, in particular with clothes, she hasn’t bothered to do anything as she says it’s too much hassle and cost to return the items, despite her usual shop offering no questions asked refunds of unworn clothes.
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This latest survey into internet advertising, from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com, their 10th regular survey on the topic, didn’t ask (or didn’t report) the one question I want to hear the results to, whether or not people run ad blocking software.
Over the 16th and 17th of March 2010 1,062 members of the goo monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.8% in their thirties, 16.4% in their forties, and 27.2% aged fifty or older.
My wife runs the Rakuten toolbar, which gives you one Rakuten search point (I’m not sure exactly how they work) when you use the toolbar to search, but the result page that comes out has almost the whole first screen full of text adverts, often for sites that appear in the natural results the next screen down. It all seems a bit of con to me, and I should really tweak Ad Muncher so it hides them all!
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The hanami, cherry blossom viewing, season is in full swing, which means all the popular areas are packed, making for not really a very pleasant experience in my opinion. Thus, this survey from iShare into hanami information sites looked into “air hanami”, just looking at the photos and not bothering visiting in person.
Between the 10th and 15th of March 2010 548 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.9% of the sample were male, 33.9% in their twenties, 31.2% in their thirties, and 34.9% in their forties.
Watching the television this last weekend, I saw that Ueno Park in Tokyo had around 100,000 visitors on Saturday! I find the crowds too much bother, so I make do with looking at Kema Sakuranomiya Park in Osaka through the window of the train to and from work.
Here’s another interesting survey from goo Ranking, this time looking at what lies we tell that come back to haunt us.
Over the 22nd and 23rd of February 2010 1,123 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.6% of the sample were female, 9.6% in their teens, 22.2% in their twenties, 32.1% in their thirties, 24.9% in their forties, 7.5% in their fifties, and 3.8% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.
My biggest lie was announcing to friends back in Scotland shortly after moving to Japan that I now had a million in the bank, but without pointing out it was in the rather less impressive yen, not pounds. I also lived in a royal mansion when I first came to Japan.
For number 13, I would have thought claiming not to be married would have been a bigger problem!
My wife doesn’t need to lie about 2, 4, 5, 15, 16 and 20. At least I hope she’s not lying about them…
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With graduation season just finished in Japan, here’s a look with goo Ranking at people’s memories, both the sad ones for men and women and the happy ones for men and women.
Over the 22nd and 23rd of February 2010 1,123 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.6% of the sample were female, 9.6% in their teens, 22.2% in their twenties, 32.1% in their thirties, 24.9% in their forties, 7.5% in their fifties, and 3.8% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.
Although the URL uses “happy” and most of the Q2 incidents seem happy to me, the actual question used “bitter-sweet”, for a reason I’m not really to sure about!
I don’t really remember anything in particular about my university graduation day, but looking at the list of event below I think they are more talking about school graduation, I think. We didn’t have any of that graduation nonsense when I was in school – the last day of school on the final year was pretty much like the last day every other year.
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