世論 What Japan Thinks

A popular anime, so I believe, is the subject of a recent survey from iShare on Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Demographics

Betwen the 29th of June and 2nd of July 2009 544 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.3% of the sample were male, 37.3% were in their twenties, 28.7% in their thirties, and 34.0% in their forties.

I find it interesting in Q1 and Q2 that women seem just as interested as men in Evangelion and associated items, although I feel that the female members in CLUB BBQ surveys are often quite geeky. In Q3, the new movie, Rebuild of Evangelion, was released to cinemas on the 27th June 2009, apparently.

I must admit to being perhaps in a rather small minority of English-speaking foreigners in Japan, those who just don’t really like anime for anime’s sake. My consumption in Japan is limited to Chibi Maruko-chan and the occasional Ghibli movie, but apart from that I don’t have any urge to watch it. I did once try to sit through Akira (or was it Ghost in the Shell?) but only got about 20 minutes in.
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Looking at the date of this survey, I don’t know why it suddenly popped up in my news feeds this week, but since I seem to have missed it the first time around, I’ll present it regardless. The survey was iShare taking a look at television advertisements that make one hungry and want to buy the food item.

Demographics

Between the 10th and 16th of February 2009 475 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service who had a mobile phone completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.2% of the sample were male, 10.9% in their twenties, 48.0% in their thirties, 32.8% in their forties, and 8.2% in their teens or fifty or older.

Note that the questions were not about a specific company’s product, but about any for the given category – I just selected a representative advertisement to illustrate the story.
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Recently, iShare looked in detail at how people view celebrities on television, but as it features a lot of names that may not be very well-known to my average reader (nor even to me!), I’ll skip over most of the survey and highlight one very frequent complaint from many foreigners about food programs here:

Why do they all scream “Delicious!” all the time?

Watch any Japanese variety program with a food section and you’ll soon see that every mouthful of even the most mundane dish sends the gourmand (or just plain old glutton) into orgasms of delight, leaving many foreigners screaming “What’s the point?” at the television, especially as I at least find the table manners rather off-putting.

One of the survey’s questions was seeing which one celebrity eating made you hungry, and number one choice was Hidehiko Ishizuka, or Ishi-chan, or the “Ma-iu” guy, depending on how familiar you are with Japanese C-list celebrities! He is a rather sweaty and obese lump with a cavernous maw, yet one third of men and one quarter of women chose him as the person who gets their stomach rumbling. Second up was professional big eater Gal Sone, a waif of a woman who wears far too much make-up and eats by… ah, even thinking about how to describe her turns my stomach! 6.7% of men and 14.4% of women picked her. Conversely, and happily from my point of view, 48.1% of men and 39.0% of women had no-one who made them hungry.

For those who chose someone, they were asked why. The top reason was the way they ate made the food look delicious, with over nine in ten saying so. Next, just 13.1% liked the person, 9.9% felt their comments while eating were easy to understand, 7.7% said seeing the person eat made them want to eat, and just 2.7% found their comments trustworthy!

Manga kissa is an abbreviation of manga kissaten, or in English comic cafe, the term I will use from now on. They can be found all over Japan, but I have yet to enter one as I have an image of them being very smokey. However, nearly half of all Japanese have been in one, according to this recent survey by Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com on the subject of comic cafes.

Demographics

Over the 27th and 28th of April 2009 300 members of the Marsh monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Exactly 50.0% of the respondents were female, 0.3% in their teens, 19.7% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older. Don’t ask me why one teenager sneaked in to disrupt the even split!

Searching around I found an interesting concept in comic cafes, Manboo, which, as the name intentionally or unintentionally suggests, appears to be a female-oriented cafe with a suspiciously Yahoo!-like logo yet has Yahoo! search embedded on its home page. I’m confused…
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Having wondered out loud in an entry a couple of days ago whether people fill their iPods from rental CDs, perhaps this survey from MyVoice into CD, DVD, book, comic, etc rental gives the answer.

Demographics

Over the first five days of April 2009 15,426 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 35% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% aged fifty or older.

Note than in the survey DVD would include Blu-Ray, I believe.

It’s interesting that over one in five has tried an online rental-by-mail system, and I also find it perhaps curious that none of the five named services have an obvious English-language (or other foreign languages) page – they stock a lot of English-language movies and there’s a reasonable number of us in far-flung corners of Japan who may be potential customers.
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Japan does have the image of being a very law-abiding country, and this survey conducted by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into portable audio players does reinforce that stereotype.

Demographics

Between the 16th and 20th of April 2009 1,056 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.8% in their twenties, 20.9% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties,15.6% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

First of all, let me say that I am not clear on the finer details of Japanese copyright law, but in Q1SQ2 one might claim that copying from CD may be illegal, but assuming given the number of music rental shops that people copy from rented CDs, I believe the law does allow one to make copies, although I did read that it is supposed to be a degraded copy, so ripping to MP3 might be OK. Second of all, downloading other people’s illegally uploaded music is not illegal; it is only the uploading that falls foul of the law, although than might or might not change soon.
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Here’s perhaps a rather ordinary survey on terrestrial digital broadcasting from goo Research, their seventh time of conducting this monthly survey, as reported by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 9th of April 2009 1,087 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.6% were in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.1% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 12.3% aged sixty or older.

In order to try to spice up this survey just today there was a very interesting development regarding the government’s “image character”, Mr Tsuyoshi Kusunagi of the popular beat combo The Smaps, who appears on their advertising promoting, to use the common Japanese abbreviation for terrestrial digital, “chi-deji”. He was arrested in the early hours of the morning chin-deta – a corny pun that I will make no effort to explain – looking for digital adjustments to his antenna, if the rumours about him and the park are to be believed. The government, and just about every other organisation that he advertises for are now busy ripping up their contracts with him, although permit me to offer the above police mugshot as an alternative. (Yes, I know I suck at Photoshop!)

Leaving the gossip behind, let’s get back to the business on hand, the survey.
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This look with MyVoice at DVD (and other media) recorder usage, their fifth survey on the topic, revealed a few interesting statistics such as the one in the headline and that the now defunct-for-over-a-year HD DVD format still outranks Blu-Ray recorders, although as noted last time I reported such a number, one wonders if there is a degree of misidentification by users. I wonder if HD DVD suggested Hard Disk plus DVD to some respondents?

Demographics

Over the first five days or March 2009 15,482 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teens, 14% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% aged fifty or older.

I got hit by a rather irritating feature between my cable box and my DVD recorder. Despite both being made by the same company, you cannot get a digital out into the DVD recorder that will allow me to record two channels at once. The support line said the only option was to rent their high-end set-top box that has a built-in hard disk recorder, but that seemed rather unsatisfactory, especially as we only took their cheapest package of converting our existing analog service to digital but no high vision, so we’ve ended up paying them an extra 300 yen plus we get a thinner paper program guide for the privilege.
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This recent survey from RealWorld RealResearch and reported on by japan.internet.com into earphones and headphones is one I’d like to see the full results for, as I’d like to learn more about why people buy new ‘phones; how much is being forced due to breakage, and how much is due to dissatisfaction with the stock set.

Research results

Over the 18th and 19th of March 2009 1,100 members of the RealWorld RealResearch monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.1% of the sample were male, 8.1% in their teens, 19.2% in their twenties, 25.9% in their thirties, 21.1% in their forties, 15.8% in their fifties, and 9.9% aged sixty or older.

This is yet another survey showing how that digital players are on dominating the market, in both the form of the iPod and friends and as mobile phones with music features.

I don’t own any sort of portable player, so I cannot comment on the survey. However, I do promote earphones, and you can see pictured above Mickey Mouse earbuds, but if that’s not quite your thing, can I interest you in piggy-shaped ones?
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With tomorrow being April Fools’ Day, what would be more appropriate than a look with iShare at virtual April Fools.

Demographics

Between the 10th and 13th of March 2009 380 mobile phone-owning members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.4% of the sample were male, 37.4% in their twenties, 27.4% in their thirties, and 35.3% in their forties.

April Fools’ Day is I feel not widely known in Japan, although that wasn’t one of the questions asked in this survey. I always keep thinking I ought to do an April Fool here, but I never come up with a good idea. Or am I just saying that to try to catch you off your guard? Or did I just state that in order to confuse you? You’ll just have to wait until tomorrow!

For reference, the JIAFA, Japan Internet April Fool Association, mentioned in Q3 has its website here, although it is rather a barren place. It might be a bit more lively tomorrow, however.

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