世論 What Japan Thinks

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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I’m back from holidays, so normal service will be resumed from today. To kick things off, here’s one from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and published by japan.internet.com looking into P2P (peer to peer) file-sharing software.

Demographics

On the 29th of July 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel employed in public or private industry completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 73.6% of the sample were male, 8.8% in their twenties, 36.4% in their thirties, 41.2% in their forties, and 13.6% in their fifties. The Japanese text said in one place it was only those in private industry interviewed, but in another that it was both public and private; and in one place people from their twenties to sixties, but the percentage breakdown did not mention anything about people in their sixties…

In Q2, one category that is omitted is legitimate software, either shareware or Linux and other GPLed contents.

My fingers are still jet-lagged, so I cannot type too much extra comment tonight…
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A bit of a straightforward (read: rather dull) survey today, reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh into news sites.

Demographics

Between the 26th and 30th of June 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and 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. Presumably teenagers were judged not sufficiently interested in news to bother asking…

In Q1 it might be surprising to western readers that there is not a separate category for television station-related news, as we have the BBC, CNN, and MSNBC, to name just a few high-profile television-related news sites. In Japan, two issues are that most of the television stations are owned by newspaper groups anyway, and their news tends to expire very quickly. In addition, portal sites are favoured by such a vast margin not just because everyone uses Yahoo! for everything, but also that few newspapers put more than a few paragraphs per story online anyway, so by reading the newswires through a portal one doesn’t really miss out on anything.
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I rarely use online sentence translators for Japanese as they are usually pretty much useless, although of course I couldn’t live without Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC for single word lookups. This recent survey from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into translation sites discovers the Japanese don’t rate them much too.

Demographics

On the 29th of June 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor panel employed in private industry successfully completed an internet-based closed questionnaire. 71.5% of the sample were male, 8.2% in their twenties, 42.7% in their thirties, 30.3% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties.

Contrary to the occassional comment I get, I don’t use the output from online, or even offline, translation engines as a basis for my articles. Blame any bad grammar on not a machine or other forms of cheating, but on me alone!

I must say I enjoyed translating this one, so I hope you find the contents useful!
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I read the results of an interesting survey into how many Japanese had downloaded the new Firefox 3 release. The executive summary is that 5.5% of a sample of Japanese internet users from all walks of life had downloaded on release day, the 18th of June, then another 5.8% have downloaded since. However, 70.3% were unaware of the release, but after being informed of it through this survey, just another 6.9% wanted to download it, but 62.9% didn’t know, suggesting that there is qite a significantly proportion of Japanese internet users who are ignorant of Firefox’s existence.

Demographics

On the 3rd of July 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.5% of the sample were female, 14.5% in their twenties, 35.2% in their thirties, 30.3% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 5.8% in their sixties.

The full details of the survey may be found at the japan.internet.com’s report here.
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I’ve got a couple of Nintendo DS learning games, but I don’t have a DS to play them on, but that’s another story. Today’s story is a survey from goo Research, in conjuction with the Research Institute for Digital Media and Content at Keio University into game machine and computer-based self-study.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 25th of February 2008 (although the results were only posted on the 17th of June) 1,063 members of the goo Research consumer monitor group in employement completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The male:female split was 50:50, with the extra odd person being male. The age range is not noted, however. By employment status, 2.9% were senior management, 8.8% middle management, 10.2% lower management, 27.2% ordinary employees, 8.0% contract or dispatch employees, 13.7% part-time or temporary, 26.0% students, and 3.2% others.

At work we have various e-learning courses available that vary from free to quite expensive, with the company usually paying half of the fees, as long as you sit the exams at the end or complete most of the coursework, etc. I’m not sure how many people actually use the facilities though!

Here the term e-learning means online training on either the internet or intranet.
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With the recet spate of natural disasters in Burma, China and now Japan itself, this may be a good time to look at a recent survey published on japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into internet donations.

Demographics

On the 5th of June 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor pool employed in private industry completed a members-only internet-based questionnaire. 77.0% of the sample were male, 9.4% in their twenties, 33.0% in their thirties, 40.6% in their forties, 15.8% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their sixties.

It’s a pretty low number of donaters and sum they are donating, and it sounds mostly like people getting rid of saved-up points that they have no intention of ever cashing in.
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If you want to see people using public WiFi in central Osaka, don’t head towards the nearest Starbucks, but instead choose the Pokemon Center where you’ll see big groups of kids huddled around the gaming access point there. This recent survey from Marsh and reported on by japan.internet.com into public wireless LAN (WiFi) suggests that games machines are beating PDAs at least.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 8th of June 2008 300 members of the Marsh internet monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample was male, 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’ve posted this before, but I’ll post again; if you want to find a public wireless access point in Japan, this site in English aids your search. However, the one at Yodobashi Camera was WAP-protected when I tried, although their electricity sockets do work. The iPhone is going to suffer in Japan from this lack of availability.

Thanks to running NetStumbler on my way home, although I pass through about 22 railway stations, including changing trains at the largest station in Osaka, the only open WiFi I pick up are misconfigured domestic routers. Many of the stations seem to have locked-up tight corporate WiFi points only.
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Barely a month goes by these days without a story about someone leaking state secrets through Winny or other P2P software, so to see if either the personal or corporate world are doing anything about these sorts of issues, Marsh Inc conducted a survey reported on by japan.internet.com into awareness of information security.

Demographics

Between the 29th of May and the 3rd of June 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor group employed in either the public or private sector successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Exactly 50.0% of the sample were male, 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.

We have internet policies at work that basically say no non-work sites are to be accessed, but I a friend works on the basis that if the proxy doesn’t block it then it’s OK. They also ban Skype because it can use a lot of bandwidth, but that excuse always smelt of convenience, as rather than put rules in place to ensure that it doesn’t steal bandwidth in the office, a blanket ban was much simpler. It’s a bit of a pain when on business trips, as I can’t use Skype for free or cheap phone calls.

In addition, at my workplace the first five security measures mentioned in Q4 are in place and we also have a smart card that is needed in order to connect to either the wireless network or the VPN.

I was disappointing in Q4 not to see the Trusted Platform Module being asked about, although I suspect the figures for usage would be absolutely zero! However, with Interop Tokyo next week seeing the launch of the Japan Regional Forum of the Trusted Computing Group, perhaps we’ll see a survey on awareness of that particular technology soon.
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I hang out occassionally on the Yahoo! Answers Japan board, and I would rate the reliability of the best answers as moderate as best, which is how most Japanese users view these sites, according to a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into Q&A sites.

Demographics

On the 2nd of June 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group employed in the private sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 81.2% of the sample were male, 10.0% in their twenties, 29.1% in their thirties, 43.6% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.

Although trust levels are high, as with Wikipedia the problem is that the casual reader doesn’t know how good the chosen best answer is (on Yahoo! at least; I’m not sure of the others) as it is often the questioner who chooses the answer that sounds best to them, or if it goes to voting then trolls and those gaming the system can outweigh genuine votes. Even with no trolling, a more palatable answer may be chosen over the truth.
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