世論 What Japan Thinks

Around two in five of the online population questioned here to be precise have heard of it, although usage of PayPal is still very low according to this survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 28th of July and the 1st of Augut 2010 1,079 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.4% of the sample were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.2% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.8% in their fifties, and 12.2% aged sixty or older.

I’ve bought from the US, the UK and Australia through PayPal, although it’s always for software or services. My most frequent transactions are with Namecheap for domain name purchase – I can’t recommend them enough, especially if like me you’d got fed up with GoDaddy’s upselling every time you try to make a simple transaction. If you do decide to use them, don’t forget that they also have an official coupon code blog where you can get a few cents or dollars off each transaction.
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Here is another very interesting survey from goo Research, a look at child-rearing and working. This is the second time the survey has been conducted, the first time being in December 2007, but I didn’t translate that one.

Demographics

Between the 24th and 29th of June 2010 exactly 1,000 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. All of the sample were working mothers with a child under six years old. 44.6% of the sample were in regular full-time employment, 9.2% contract or dispatch workers, 38.6% part-time or casual, and 7.8% were on a child-rearing holiday.

You might want to look at another recent survey from goo Research on diverse working styles.

As far as I am aware, my employer has all the systems mentioned below in place for both mothers and fathers, although not surprisingly very few of the fathers avail themselves of any of the benefits; one day off for the baby popping out and another one for the mother being discharged from hospital seems about the size of it on average. Although Q6 shows that the wives want their husbands to make use of more benefits, Q7 and Q8 show a high degree of satisfaction with their husbands’ efforts. Are women setting the bar too low or are they just accepting that Japanese working styles on the whole result in father never seeing the kid on weekdays?
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Zangyo is the Japanese for overtime, and when it is sandwiched between two English words as in the title of this article it refers to a system that seems surprisingly common, No Overtime Day, a weekly event in my office where people are supposed to go home at five o’clock. This survey from iShare took a look at its implementation.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 25th of June 2010 429 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.6% of the sample were male, 31.9% in their twenties, 31.0% in their thirties, and 37.1% in their forties.

Today was No Zangyo Day in the office. As I had to go to the hospital this morning I had to work an extra hour and 45 minutes to make up, yet I was still first to leave the office! Our Team Leader announced around about 18:30 that it was No Overtime Day and oughtened we think about going home, which is really about the extent of the implementation for me. However, other groups in the same building are better at going home, and I do notice the train station outside work is busier in the early evening on Wednesdays.
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With the iPad having been out in Japan for just about a month, iBridge Research Plus thought it about time to conduct another survey on Apple’s iPad. japan.internet.com chose to focus on the business applicability of the device in their report.

Demographics

On the 21st of June 2010 300 employed members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 72.3% of the sample were male, 14.7% in their twenties, 33.7% in their thirties, 29.7% in their forties, 19.0% in their fifties, and 3.0% in their sixties.

Shortly after it came out I read an article about a doctor in Japan using one in the operating theatre. At least he put it into a bag, but I thought it was a highly irresponsible thing to do, as the wi-fi could have interfered with the critical devices, for instance. For general hospital use, it needs a lot of work to be either germ-proof or washable – Panasonic already make a robust but boring tablet for medical use, but I’d be much more comfortable seeing a medical professional using that instead of an iPad!

I think the significant roles for the iPad in business are perhaps limited to photography-related work and to life insurance and other financial salespeople, especially of the home visiting type. There’s probably also a niche for travel agents as a terminal for customers to view virtual brochures and the like.
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The first question one might have is what is diversity; the immediate thing that springs to my mind, at least, is having an anti-discrimination policy at work covering race, creed, gender and sexual orientation. However, in this survey into diversity management by goo Research only one and a half (“foreign” rather than “race”) of these groups appear.

Demographics

Between the 16th and 21st of June 2010 930 members of the goo Research monitor group employed in companies with more than 50 employees completed a private internet-base questionnaire. The sex and age splits were not reported, but 23.3% worked in manufacturing, 14.9% in service, food or drink, 10.5% for local or national government, 9.8% in retail, 9.5% in information or distribution, 6.8% in construction or real estate, 5.6% in finance, 4.3% in distribution, 1.6% in farming, fisheries, forestry, mining, or utilities, and 13.7% in other industry. 16.3% worked for companies with between 50 and 99 employees, 30.1% with 100 to 499 employees, 11.0% with 500 to 999 employees, 19.9% with 1,000 to 4,999 employees, and 22.7% in companies with 5,000 or more employees.

The company I work for does just about everything in Q1. I’m not sure about a specific older person employment scheme, whatever that might be, but we do actively hire staff in mid-career, not just new graduates. We’re extremely active recently in foreigner employment, and I’m surprised that our managing director’s recent writings on the matter have barely hit the Japanese newspapers and blogs, let alone the English-language sphere.

It’s interesting that diversity management here seems to be more about diverse employment patterns for existing staff, trying to allow for working styles other than the 9 to 5 10, work before family. As mentioned above, our company has generous paternity leave on offer, but even this year when two guys’ wives gave birth the guys took one day off for the birth and another for when she came out of hospital before returning to the same old 9 to 10 (pm of course) regardless of necessity.

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I’ve been looking forward to encountering a survey such as this one from iBridge Research Plus, reported on by japan.internet.com, into overseas money transfer, focusing on the seemingly invisible in Japan PayPal.

Demographics

On the 17th of May 2010 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.3% of the sample were male, 13.3% in their twenties, 35.7% in their thirties, 28.0% in their forties, 16.0% in their fifties, and 7.0% in their sixties.

On the first of April this year PayPal banned inter-personal money transfers originating in Japan to be in compliance with the Fund Settlement Act.

I was surprised to see almost a third aware of PayPal, as I thought it was very much a niche product in Japan.
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With the government recommending that mobile companies remove SIM Lock restrictions on future mobile phones, thus allowing the same phone to be used on multiple carriers, this survey from iShare into SIM Lock removal found more people than I expected opposed to the move.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 19th of April 2010 469 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.6% of the sample were male, 29.6% in their twenties, 35.4% in their thirties, and 35.0% in their forties.

I’m all for SIM Lock removal, if just to encourage service providers to compete on price rather than the current locking into high-priced handsets and long-term contracts. Despite Japan having just about the cheapest fixed-line internet, mobile prices are all basically between 4,000 and 5,000 yen or so for all-you-can-use data plans, plus an additional 1,000 to 2,000 yen per month for basic service access with very few free minutes, then 40,000 to 60,000 for the handset on top. In the UK, as far as I can determine data plans are about half that price yet handsets are still subsidised. Due to these high prices, I cannot afford to upgrade to an Xperia, despite the many good reviews (barring battery life) that I am reading.
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On the 1st of June last year the law in Japan was changed to allow certain non-prescription drugs to be sold over the internet; this recent survey from iBridge Research Plus, reported on by japan.internet.com, looked at the sale of medical products, focusing on internet purchases.

Demographics

On the 12th of April 2010 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were male, 13.7% in their twenties, 31.3% in their thirties, 32.0% in their forties, 16.0% in their fifties, and 7.0% in their sixties.

Looking at Q1, the law change liberalised some sales, but also reigned in others, which was what was being asked – Japan Economy News describes the situation in detail.
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It’s been a while since I’ve done a FAIL survey, so I’m sure you’ve all missed them. This time it was goo Ranking looking at internet shopping site FAILs.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 25th of March 2010 1,128 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.5% of the sample were female, 15.1% in their teens, 16.9% in their twenties, 28.8% in their thirties, 21.1% in their forties, 9.4% in their fifties, and 8.7% 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.

I don’t think I’ve had a failure shopping for a while, as it’s almost exclusively services or downloadable software I purchase. I did have a failure when I switched my domains to GoDaddy, then after a year they billed me for some useless directory service – I’ve since changed everything over to Namecheap.com who are, as the name suggests, cheap and, more importantly, do not try to upsell you at every opportunity. They also do domain anonymising at a very reasonable rate.

The wife buys some waffle cakes online occasionally, but I can’t help thinking that since a branch of the waffle shop is located at the next station down the line, we’d be cheaper buying from there.
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Although the survey is biased towards heavy users of mobiles, this recent survey from Point On Research into mobile wallpaper found a quite high percentage of people willing to pay for dynamic wallpaper.

Demographics

On the 23rd of April 2010 800 heavy users of mobile phones complted a private mobile phone-based survey. The sample was 50:50 male and female, 25.0% in their teens, 25.0% in their twenties, 25.0% in their thirties, and 25.0% in their forties. The exact definition of “heavy user” is not given, but I would imagine as a start it is people who max out their all-you-can-use data plans.

Note that Q1 indicates a bias away from SoftBank and toward au mostly – the usual split is around 45:30:20:5.

Funnily enough, today I saw an ad on my mobile phone and wanted to download a free Sento-kun 3D animated wallpaper, but my ancient phone cannot support it!

Note that wallpaper can function as both a backdrop and an animated screensaver, which explains to some extent the significant amount of Flash.
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