世論 What Japan Thinks

I’ve rather given up on fireworks, as there are just too many people attending them these days so it never seems worth the hassle. Sadly, the numbers planning to attend fireworks this year was not reported, but a recent survey by goo Research conducted in conjunction with Metroguide magazine into fireworks displays came up with other interesting data.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 8th of June 2007 1,092 members of goo Research’s internet monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. All respondents lived in Tokyo or the surrounding three prefectures of Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba. No sex or age breakdown was reported.

The first year we stayed in my previous flat we had a great view of the Takarazuka fireworks from our balcony, but then they build a tower block right in the way, and although we lived barely 500 metres away from the heart of the party, we never bothered watching or going out. From our new flat, if we stand on chairs on the balcony we can just see parts of the Inagawa fireworks, but other than that, we haven’t been to fireworks for ages, and I don’t feel we’re really missing much.
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2 Channel is the bulletin board system that mkes all the news in Japan, usually for all the wrong reasons! It is a cess-it, albeit an extremely popular cess-pit, always ready to pounce on the latest scandal and spread much muck, along with the all to rare smidgeon of truth. To learn more about what people get out of these boards, japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research on the very topic of internet bulletin board usage.

Demographics

On the 16th of May 2007 JR Tokai Express Research interviewed 330 people by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.5% of the sample was female, 22.4% in their twenties, 36.7% in their forties, 23.9% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 6.1% in their sixties.

About the only bulletin board I’m active on these days is the Digital Point forums.
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Sadville, as The Register is wont to call it, will be released on a mostly unsuspecting Japanese audience this summer. Although some Japanese companies have already set up virtual shop in the Second Life metaverse, with the new headquarters for mixi (the giant Japanese Social Networking Service) even featuring on prime-time news, until now only an English-langauge client has been available for Japanese users. In antcipation of the imminent client release, japan.internet.com reported on the start of a new series of surveys by goo Research on this very topic, Second Life.

Demographics

Between the 28th and 30th of May 2007 goo Research interviewed 1,102 members of its internet monitor group. 53.0% of the sample was male, 17.0% in their teens, 20.9% in their twenties, 18.0% in their thirties, 16.8% in their forties, and 27.3% aged fifty or older.

I won’t be found in Second Life, as my rather ancient PC does not have the required horsepower, and I have enough going on in my First Life to not require an escape to a Second.

New visitors might also be interested in a survey on virtual world English lessons and an awareness study on Second Life.

It also seems that Sony plan to release their own similar world, called “Home”, and TransCosmos and other companies are planning one called “meet-me”.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by goo Research into digital camera storage issues.

Demographics

1,080 members of goo Research’s online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based survey between the 20th and 21st of April 2007. 51.9% of the sample was male, 17.1% in their teens, 19.8% in their twenties, 17.8% in their thirties, 17.6% in their forties, 17.0% in their fifties, and 10.6% aged sixty or older.

My current photo store comes to around 10 gigabytes, with most of it backed up to CD. I was suprised by the large number of people using external hard disks, but with prices dropping I suppose it makes for rapid and flexible backup when compared to CDs or DVDs.
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I noticed over on Mutant Frog Travelogue that Adamu presented the results of research by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries and others into isues surrounding wedding banquet costs. Well worth a visit to check out the waste that goes on at such events.

japan.internet.com recently reported on an interesting little poll conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into television at home.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 19th of April 2007 Cross Marketing interviewed 300 members of their online monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. All the respondents lived in Tokyo or the surrounding area and were mobile phone users. 50.0% were male, 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

With the soon-approaching analogue switch-off on the 24th of July 2011 (why that date? I must research that!) it would seem that there is quite a bit of scope for the market in both televisions and DVD and hard disk recorders to expand as people buy them as much for the digital tuners as for the other features. My home too is still strictly analogue, but our CRT does have the required digital input plug if we decide to update the VCR alone.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of research conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the use of melody calls. This is the service (and a trademark of NTT DoCoMo) whereby when someone calls a phone, instead of getting a standard tone, instead music selected by the phone owner gets played, a sort of reverse ringtone for the caller instead of the callee.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 9th of April 2007 330 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s monitor group answered a private internet-based questionnaire. 47.3% of the sample was male, 21.8% in their twenties, 38.5% in their thirties, 20.3% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 5.2% in their sixties.

Currently only NTT DoCoMo and au by KDDI support this feature. The DoCoMo feature is named “Melody Call”, and au’s translates as “EZ Waiting Music”. SoftBank does not offer such a service. In March DoCoMo reported they attained over 10 million subscribers to the service, whereas au reported 1 million contracts. However, DoCoMo offers a feature package of Melody Call plus answer phone, call waiting and call forwarding for a price only 100 yen more expensive than the standard answer phone service, so perhaps their extremely high figures can be attributed to people buying the package and getting the Melody Call bundled rather than suggesting a huge desire for the feature alone. Indeed, with only 13.6% of users in this survey reporting that they are currently using the service I suspect there is a significant percentage of people who are not actually aware or have forgotton that they signed up to it.

I’ve personally never heard a melody call ring tone, but that’s probably because I don’t make many outgoing calls.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on goo Research’s sixth regular Social Networking Service (SNS) sruvey.

Demographics

Between the 9th and 11th of April 2007 1,086 members of goo’s online monitor group completed a questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample were male, 17.4% in their teens, 19.9% in their twenties, 17.9% in their thirties, 17.5% in their forties, 16.5% in their fifties, and 10.9% in their sixties.

I supose satisfaction levels are a given, as people wouldn’t tend to use SNSs if they weren’t enjoying them, although it does seem that 3% are soldiering on regardless.
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As part of their 113th Ranking Research, DIMSDRIVE Research asked their online panel what Japanese movies would they recommend to foreigners.

Demographics

5,537 members of their monitor panel successfully completed the questionnaire. 55.0% of the sample was female.

“It’s Hard Being a Man” (Otoko ha Tsurai yo) series seems a rather strange choice, as from what I can gather the plots (or is it plot singular?) are based around such Japanese values that they would be rather difficult to translate, and even with a good translation the cultural cues would be lost on the average viewer. I suspect it might be like recommending the Carry On series to the Japanese as a means of understanding the UK!
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With both the 2007 Japan Professional Baseball and the 2007 US Major League Baseball seasons underway, and with wall-to-wall Japanese television coverage of the exploits of the local players in the Major League, goo Research, in conjuction with the Mainichi Shimbun, performed a survey that looked at reformation of the professional baseball draft system in Japan. This article contains just the highlights of the fuller survey that they conducted.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 26th of March, members of goo Research’s online monitor group were randomly selected and 1,089 of them successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire.

As well as the US careers of Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui and Daisuke Matsuzaka, the other big baseball-related topics are plans to reduce the length of time before becoming eligible for Free Agency from the current nine years, and to reform the draft system to prevent, or at least reduce, problems occuring from cases such as amateurs receiving dodgy handouts from the Seibu Lions.
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