世論 What Japan Thinks

A few months ago there was a couple of articles in the US press with suspect (or just poorly-reported) statistics on cellphone literature in Japan, but at the time I didn’t have any good data to refute the stories with. However, this weekend not one, but two surveys come along, one from goo Research and one from Marsh, both reported on by japan.internet.com, on this very topic of cellphone novels.

Demographics

For the goo Research sample, between the 22nd and 25th of September 2008 1,074 people from their online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 21.9% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 16.2% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

For the Marsh sample, on the 26th of September 2008 they interviewed 300 females from their monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 21.7% were in their twenties, 51.3% in their thirties, and 27.0% in their forties.

Very surprising for me is that goo Research’s mixed sample showed a higher percentage of readership than Marsh’s young female group, although the level of enjoyment was relatively similar for both groups. The reasons for this would be interesting to investigate.
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I left the UK just as alcopops, fizzy drink-like youth-targeted cheap and relatively high in alcohol drinks started to become a serious problem due to their appeal to under-age drinkers. In Japan there is chuhai, and this is what MyVoice looked at in their sixth canned chuhai survey.

Demographics

Over the first five days in September 2008 15,054 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 15% in their twetnies, 36% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 20% in their fifties.

According to the dictionary, chuhai is an abbreviation of shochu highball, Japanese spirits with tonic water, although the canned form often bears little resemblence to its humble origin. Alcohol content varies from 4% to 7%, and due to low tax rates one can of supermarket own-brand costs 88 yen (84 US cents or 45 UK pennies) for 330 millitres, close to half the price of branded beer, or about a third less than happoshu, and even cheaper when you consider the price per unit of alcohol.

By the way, yes, Suntory Calorie. actually does have a full stop after Calorie, it’s not a misprint!
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Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea was the sweetest film I’ve seen since My Neighbour Totoro, and over 8 million Japanese seem to agree with that sentiment. The official Ponyo site itself has racked up just under a million visitors, 995,000 to be precise, (low in my view) from home computers in July, the highest ever figures for the film maker Ghibli’s properties, with the main ages of the visitors being 34% in their thirties and 29% in their forties. By sex, 57% were female. Previous records were 701,000 in November of 2004 for Howl’s Moving Castle, and 444,000 in July of 2006 for Tales of Earthsea.

For all of the Ghibili sites visitors jumped from 114,000 in June to 1,123,000 in July.

For box office sales, number one for the first half of the year was 相棒, aibou, with 311,000 predominantly male viewers in May alone, with over half of the total being over forty years old. In July, the top movie was Hana Yori Dango (Boys before Flowers) with 576,000 ticket sales, 85% of them to females, and 38% of the viewers 19 years old or younger.

Story from the Japanese original on IT Media.

With the Olympics over for another four years and with Japan getting a reasonable haul of medals, Macromill performed a survey into post-Olympic views.

Demographics

Over the 25th and 26th of August 2008 516 members of the Macromill Monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female in each age group; 24.8% were in their twenties, 25.2% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, and 24.8% in their fifties.

I didn’t watch much of the Olympics, but for me the most moving moments were Usian Bolt winning his two individual medals; celebrating the 100 metres win 10 metres before the finish line, then pulling out all the stops on the 200 metres to win by the proverbial mile.

Also, just today I read that Kosuke Kitajima, the double-double gold medal swimmer, was voted best beerist for knocking back a pint or two in celebration!
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With Apple’s iPhone doing – well, nobody knows, as Apple will not allow SoftBank to release any data, but it’s certainly winning the PR and brand image battle. To see if any of the charm has rubbed off onto the iPod touch, JR Tokai Express Research Inc conducted a survey, the results being reported on by japan.internet.com.

Research results

On the 19th of August 2008 332 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel employed in either the public or private sectors completed an internet-based private questionnaire. 85.8% of the sample were male, 6.6% in their twenties, 33.1% in their thirties, 45.5% in their forties, 12.0% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.

Talking of the iPhone (I’ve mentioned often enough how little I am interested in portable music) I saw an article in the Australian newspaper … on the Japan iPhone market that was rather inaccurate, so I’ll take this chance to correct it. What they did get right, however, is that the iPhone will shake up the Japan market, but I don’t think it will be quite the earthquake that I first thought. It quotes someone as saying:

Gerhard Fasol, of telecoms consultancy Eurotechnology Japan, estimates they shifted between 75,000 and 125,000 units in July. At that rate, he thinks 2008 sales could total between 645,000 and 1 million.

No, it will not sell one million this year. SoftBank have already dropped the price of the plan to allow a discount for people who use less than 5 Mb of data per month, but that represents barely one page a day through the Safari web browser. WiFi is not a viable option as public access points are rare in Japan, and if one does stick to that, why not just buy an iPod touch and keep one’s proper phone for everything else? No support for emoji for instance, not just input but also display, will turn off just about every casual user.

This potential for continuously upgrading applications, without also needing to replace handsets, is the genuine innovation Apple brings to the Japanese mobile market and the most direct challenge to the existing system..

Almost all newer mobile phones have options to update their firmware and applications, although this option is rarely taken. There is maybe an argument that the iPhone’s process is more user-friendly, but when one thinks of a phone one expects it to work straight out of the factory and not have to have repeated upgrades. Of course, it’s rather difficult to download a One Seg receiver or an electronic cash chip, yet Japanese phones can easily download extra packages to support more types of electronic money.

Now, back to the iPod touch.
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Although other reports have shown that visitors to the home-grown competitor to YouTube, Nico-Nico Douga, stay longer and watch more per session, in terms of both visitor numbers and total viewing time, YouTube is still ahead. Therefore, this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc looked only at YouTube.

Demographics

On the 6th of August 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group employed inb either public or private industry completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 69.7% of the sample were male, 9.7% in their twenties, 36.1% in their thirties, 41.2% in their forties, 10.6% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

Q1 is a bit of a poor question as when you first access it defaults to the country and language setting of you browser (I think), but from a menu on top you can change both the language and the default country, so presenting a binary Japan versus USA is incorrect. I use Japan as my location and UK English as my language, so how would I answer?

Q2 is also confusing as what is entertainment? I guess that means clips from television variety programs, but it’s difficult to be sure.
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Perhaps the headline is a little misleading, given that so much television in Japan can be found on the internet, and places like Nico-Nico Douga can make it interactive (but lets ignore the copyright issues), so perhaps the results of this survey from JR Tokai Express Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into television and internet are not as cut and dried as they seem.

Demographics

Over the 16th and 17th of July 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 61.5% of the sample were female (a surprisingly, if not suspiciously, high figure for JR Tokai) 17.9% were in their twenties, 37.0% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 12.4% in their fifties, and 5.5% in their sixties.

When a similar survey was conducted two years ago (which I am sure I translated, but I cannot find it!), television won in the fun stakes, but despite the wider availability of digital television with more interactivity and One Seg becoming a standard feature on most mobiles, and despite digital video recorders allowing users to watch television when they want to, broadcasting has lost out to computers. I’d love to know what exactly people found fun or not fun about both media and what has become more or less fun in the last two years; perhaps that information is available in the full survey.
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The title is a hint to the question goo Ranking recently asked the goo Research monitor group, which completed famous serialised manga do you not actually know the conclusion of.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 23th of May 2008 1,072 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Exactly 50% of the sample were male, 5.7% in their teens, 12.9% in their twenties, 31.8% in their thirties, 27.5% in their forties, 11.3% in their fifties, and 10.8% 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.

Not being much of a manga reader myself, and certainly not of the weekly phone directory-sized comics, I cannot really comment on this. However, no doubt some of my readers might inform me of the conclusions, so if you don’t want to get endings spoilt, please stop reading now!
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A few months have passed since Blu-ray emerged as the victor from the next generation high capacity optical disk format wars, so this recent survey from Marsh and reported on by japan.internet.com on digital television program recording also had a look at people’s purchasing plans.

Demographics

Between the 3rd and 8th of July 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were female, 20.0% 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.

I went digital a couple of months ago with a Panasonic DiGa (I was going to link to the official US site, but it’s broken…), which is rather nice except for a slightly slow boot-up time; it’s about 30 seconds from power on until it’s ready to go. Mind you, I don’t really use the thing myself, leaving it mostly up to the wife to record. We’ve not filled up the hard disk yet; the super long-play mode gives us 400 hours, so we’re only half-full so far, even though we record two or three programs per day.

Blu-ray is still far too expensive, and as we don’t have a handy video shop (and more than enough movies queued up anyway!) there’s no real appeal.
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With the analogue switch-off only three years away, this recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into television finds that there are still a awful lot of old televisions still in circulation.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 9th of June 2008 1,001 members of the goo Research online monitor group successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 9.0% in their teens, 23.0% in their twenties, 24.2% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 27.7% aged fifty or older.

The Japanese for CRT is ブラウン管, buraun kan, which I thought referred to the colour of initial devices, so it meant a “brown tube”, but just last weekend I learnt that it’s so named from the German inventor Braun; in Germany also the CRT is usually called a Braun tube (or whatever the German for tube is).
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