世論 What Japan Thinks

After looking up a handy internet reference, it seems that the original Japanese version of this article misinterpreted what Engel’s Law really is, but don’t let that spoil the report from japan.internet.com on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into family budgets and communication costs.

Demographics

On the 28th of July 2007 331 married women aged between 30 and 59 who were members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group successfully completed an online questionnaire. 59.8% of the sample were in their thirties, 28.4% in their forties, and 11.8% in their fifties.

There’s an interesting social point here that traditionally it is the woman who looks after the family budget, with the husband handing over his pay packet and getting a small sum of pocket money back to last him through the month, thus they chose married women as the best judges, presumably, of the family finances.

For me, communications comes to just under 20,000 yen, helped by having an extremely cheap fibre connection – under 3,000 yen, and a bundled phone deal with our cable company that works out rather cheap. Don’t ask me how much that is in relation to monthly outgoings, however!

Engel’s law states that the ratio of food costs to total budget tends to decrease as salary increases, but this survey does not report results from Q1SQ2 in relation to salaries, so one can conclude that either the more detailed survey results back this up, or they are, as suggested above, misusing the term.
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One way of making Japan a cheaper country to live it is to make sure you participate in as many point cards and other loyalty schemes as possible, as many shops and restaurants offer some degree of discounts (often from 3% to 10% or more) if you sign up to their schemes. Of course, one drawback is that you end up with a bulging wallet and time-consuming scrambles looking for the correct card. Recently, Macromill Inc reported on a survey they conducted on this topic, point cards.

Demographics

Over the 13th and 14th of July 2007 516 members of the Macromill Monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split exactly 50:50 male and female in each age group, and similarly there were 25.0% in their twenties, 25.0% in their thirties, 25.0% in their forties and 25.0% in their fifties.

Note that in this survey questions Q1 and Q2, point cards include stamp cards, airline mileage cards, and other loyalty point-based systems, but exclude credit card points, which are investingated in Qs 5 to 7. However, some of the newer combined credit card and railway pass cards have schemes where you get bonus points for spending money in the railway line’s department store or other group companies, so I don’t know whether these point schemes are counted or not.

With some of the big electrical chains who have point systems offering from 10% to 20% depending on purchases, it can be definitely argued that their prices are artificially higher to fund this system, and with comparison shopping it is possible to save more money. However, in Osaka the choice for me is bascially either the huge Yodobashi Camera right beside the main station or perhaps saving 5% to 10% if I head down to Den-Den Town, taking 10 minutes in the subway then 15 minutes by foot, fighting my way through the crowds, then hoping the store still has the product in stock, takes credit cards, doesn’t have a prohibitive delivery cost, etc.
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I once met someone who got chucked out of a department store for eating whole platefoods of the sample food, but if you play by the rules in Japanese food courts you can get to try a decent amount of free food. To see what the average Japanese person gets up to, MyVoice recently surveyed its online community to see what they thought about free samples.

Demographics

Over the first five days of July 2007 12,654 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was male, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% aged fifty or older.

My favourite free sample is always food, and I find Hanshin department store in Umeda, Osaka a good place to try before I have no intention of buying. Other than that, I don’t really collect much else, although wifey saves up free cosmetic samples for use on holidays, and she quite often ends up buying the food we sample.

Note that paper tissues are exempt from this survey. Oh, and talking of free samples, all of you in Japan did try to get a free cream puff, I hope! The offer is still open, just in case you missed it the first time.
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One place where mobile phone vendors probably make a reasonable amount of profit is on accessories purchased along with a new phone, as they have the customer already opening their wallet, so pushing a couple of extra bits and bobs onto the punter is a relatively easy sale. To find out how the customer thinks, japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by goo Research into mobile phone accessories.

Demographics

Between the 27th and 30th of July 2007 1,084 members of goo Research’s online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.9% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 15.4% in their fifties, and 12.2% aged sixty or older.

Looking at Q2, I wonder if there is a possibility that the respondents were confused. I find it rather difficult to believe that less than one in five buy either an AC adaptor or a cradle, or conversely that almost one in five buy a second AC adaptor or cradle, so perhaps there was confusion as to whether or not to indicate that the separately paid for but usually purchased (I suspect) adaptor and cradle were actually to be counted as accessories.
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Being just back from my own two-week summer holidays – much to the envy dismay of my co-workers who are, I am sure (I think), really just jealous that I can ignore convention and fly off for a decent holiday – it was interesting to see this recent survey conducted by goo Research into 2007 summer holiday plans for company employees.

Demographics

Towards the end of June 2007 1,080 members of goo Research’s monitor panel aged up to 59 years old and employed in private companies completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Fuller demographic information was not presented.

Depressing statistics, aren’t they?

As another point of reference regarding holidays in Japanese companies, Terrie Lloyd had an interesting article on Japan Today regarding the laws and conventions surrounding holidays.

Also note that most Japanese employees take holidays in the middle of August, around the Obon period, a traditional Japanese holiday.
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Japan may be one of the top producers of the latest home electrical items, but is it a big consumer of what it produces? With the smallness of the average home being perhaps a factor, how many gadgets make their way to the consumer? Recently infoPLANT (who seem to be in the process of changing their name to Yahoo! Japan Value Insight) published the results of a short survey on home electricals ownership and purchasing plans. Note that this survey was conducted just a month before the summer bonus season started, so perhaps some of the respondents were thinking about what they wanted to buy.

Demographics

Over a week from the 29th of May to the 4th of June 2007 infoPLANT made the survey available through the menuing system of NTT DoCoMo’s iMode mobile phone system, where 6,606 people, 63.2% female, self-selected themselves and successfully completed the survey.

Personally, we manage just a big fridge, an air purifier and a video camera, and perhaps we would like sometime to buy a hard disk recorder.
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I’ve never heard (as it were) of people surfing under voice control at work (excluding swearing at the browser for crashing or the internet for being slow, of course) but a recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on browsing at work showed that these sort of people do exist.

Demographics

On the 7th of June 2007 333 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor pool employed in private industry completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 70.9% of the sample were male, 10.5% in their twenties, 52.0% in their thirties, 29.1% in their forties, 6.0% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

Sadly there was no question asked (or at least not reported) on how much of the time was spent on work-related versus private-related activities. Our workplace strictly forbids private surfing.

Q2 is a bit confusing to answer regarding feed reading – does using services like Google Reader or Bloglines count as using a feed reader? Therefore, I find the figures in that table a bit unreliable. I also wonder why so many people don’t know how they are surfing.
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One of things my employer does manage to do right with my corporate mail box is keep it almost free from spam, with barely one per day getting past the filters, although I have no idea how many spams get caught, but I suspect it may be quite a few as my work email address can be found in postings on the internet. Sadly, a recent survey published by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on the topic of workplace email does not report on how much of an issue spam is in the average workplace.

Demographics

On the 8th of June 2007 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group who worked in private industry completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 73.0% of the sample was male, 13.3% in their twenties, 45.5% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 8.5% in their fifties, and 5.5% in their sixties.

Daily mail volume at work is probably close to 70 or so, including corporate internal semi-spam. However, … ahh, I must apply some self-censorship here, so just read the results, please.
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With the worries about “stranger danger” in Japan far outweighing the reality of the situation, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on the topic of children and mobile phones.

Demographics

On the 6th of June 2007 JR Tokai Express Research received 330 successfully-completed questionnaires from members of its internet monitor group aged between 30 and 59. 73.0% of the sample was female, 49.1% in their thirties, 33.9% in their forties, and 17.0% in their fifties.

Some of the proposed systems for tracking children are in my opinion worse than the original problem and are robbing children of their childhood.
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With the advent of summer heralding the cockroach season, now might be a good time to stock up on various chemicals ready to murder the poor blighters should they make an appearance. So, why not buy the weapons of mass destruction that have been recommended by the readers of goo Rankings when they voted on which commercial insecticide they use the most to kill cockroaches. The survey was conducted on the 19th and 20th of April 2007.

The Japanese for cockroach is ゴキブリ, gokiburi, just in case you are interested.
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