世論 What Japan Thinks

I’m yet to go pake-hodai in Japan; pake-hodai, or パケ放題, is the DoCoMo trademarked (I think) term which means as many data packets as you want, but it has passed into the language as the generic term for fixed rate plans. However, if this survey recently reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh into fixed-price cellphone data packet plans is to be believed, almost three in five Japanese pay a fixed amount per month for their data.

Demographics

Between the 6th and 10th of March 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Exactly 50:50 of the sample were male and female, 20.0% were in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 13.3% in their fifties, and 6.7% in their sixties.

These all-you-can-eat deals have two rather expensive exceptions to their coverage; first is using the cellphone as a modem – this gets charged at normal call rates, and second is the so-called full browser, a more fully-featured browser that can view standard computer-targeted sites in all their glory – to get these packets for free, you need to upgrade your plan to one covering the full browser too.
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I run an ad blocker, although I keep Google ads live (and I hope you do too!) as they are mostly pretty lightweight and quick to load, and most importantly usually text-only. I do very occasionally click search ads but don’t really find them that useful, and this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and performed by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into web search showed that a lot of Japanese do too.

Demographics

Over the 3rd and 4th of March 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.3% of the sample was male, 3.6% in their teens, 15.2% in their twenties, 37.6% in their thirties, 25.8% in their forties, 9.1% in their fifties, 5.8% in their sixties, and 3.0% aged seventy or older.

Note that because many television and print advertisements feature search keywords rather than URLs, rather than engage in SEO activities to naturally boost a product’s home page the companies buy advertising space on the major search engines, thus, perhaps, Japanese people pay more attention to the sponsored links.

From what I’ve heard, if you want to advertise Google of course gives you the largest audience, but Yahoo!’s customers are more click-happy and keen to buy, although Yahoo! has a higher minimum cost per click charge. MSN/Windows Live seems actually to be the best from an overall package point of view, but looking at the results below, if you’re trying to sell in Japan you won’t see much business!
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I’ve never taken part in online auctions myself, although I’ve got a bit of rubbish high quality pre-owned goods that I could always get rid of to bring in a few extra pennies. However, it seems that a large minority of Japanese are busy buying and selling, if this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc on auctions is to be believed.

Demographics

On the 6th of March 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor pool successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample was female, 17.0% in their twenties, 42.1% in their thirties, 23.3% in their forties, 9.1% in their fifties, and 8.5% in their sixties.

In a survey last week I commented on how a surprisingly high percentage of Japanese spend most online time on Yahoo! but this suggests many of them are busy with auctions!

If you want to take part in Japanese auctions, but you live overseas or cannot read Japanese too well, I usually recommend Rinkya as somewhere that provides a bidding and forwarding service for these sorts of buyers. I’ve not personally used their services, and I’ve indeed not even seen any reviews of their service, and they are not cheap, but if you need items from Japan they seem a good place to check out.
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This is a recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and performed by JR Tokai Express Research Inc on the topic of internet site viewing habits.

Demographics

On the 4th of February 2008 334 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group employed in the private or public sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 83.2% of the sample was male, 9.9% in their twenties, 39.5% in their thirties, 38.0% in their forties, 10.8% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.

That’s quite interesting, if not amazing, that three in ten spend most of their time on portals, with of course Yahoo! getting the lion’s share of that. Conversely, over half check five or less sites regularly. For myself, I’d say I spend most time at news sites, and if I count just Google Reader for all my RSS feeds, there’s less than 10 that I regularly check.
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Although previous surveys have shown that 4% used P2P software at the time of the survey, this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Research on the use of audio-visual contents on home computers shows a slightly different picture.

Demographics

Between the 28th of February and the 3rd of March 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor panel with a computer at home completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, with 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 13.3% in their fifties, and 6.7% in their sixties.

Note that Marsh Research are a new-to-me research company.

I don’t bother downloading music myself, but I may or may not have occasionally downloaded a movie or two of dubious provenance, not that I actually ever have time to watch them! Having said that, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is playing in the background as I translate this article.
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My new place, being a bit posh, is serviced by a Co-op home delivery service that perhaps at least 10% take advantage of, but we’ve never tried, and I don’t know if people order via the phone or by the internet. Wifey also occasionally orders ready-made foods via phone, fax, and internet, so this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into food ingredient online home delivery services was of interest to me. Note that this is for ingredients, not prepared food delivery.

Demographics

On the 22nd of February 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor team employed in either the public or private sector took part in a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.3% were male, 17.9% were in their twenties, 36.4% in their thirties, 26.1% in their forties, 6.1% in their fifties, and 8.2% in their sixties. Note that usually JR Tokai Express has 80% male when they survey employed people, so I don’t know if the more even sex balance is due to them selecting a more balanced group, an error in the report, or self-selection.

I suppose the main thing stopping me from using online ordering is that for fresh items, I really want to be able to cast my eye over them to check that I am picking the best available, not just good enough.
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One online game I see heavily advertised in Japan is a free online RPG Maple Story, although I’ve never actually played it myself, and I take no responsibility from any addiction caused by clicking through that link! To see what the average Japanese person plays at online, MyVoice performed a survey on online games.

Demographics

Over the first five days of February 2008 15,447 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 16% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 17% in their fifties.

I used to play online games, starting with the sadly departed Meridian 59, then beta testing Ultima Online, Everquest as both a beta and a paid-for player, then finally Asheron’s Call for quite a bit until I found out that being an anti-social git meant I didn’t get very far ahead. I still miss Meridian 59, as it was small enough to form real friendships, in fact even leading to a real-life meeting with a bunch of other people once. I don’t think I’d ever do that again as there seems to be far too many weirdos about these days, or maybe it’s just I’m a bit older and less naive.
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Yahoo! is stupidly popular in Japan for just about everything, it seems, so this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into Yahoo! JAPAN reveals what people do at the portal.

Demographics

On the 28th of February 2008 330 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor panel employed in either the private or public sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 82.7% of the sample were male, 10.9% in their twenties, 38.5% in their thirties, 36.1% in their forties, 11.2% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties.

As suspected, last week’s survey that claimed only 18% used a portal’s train scheduler seems to be wrong, as here nearly half of all users say they use Yahoo! Transit to find their connections. I’m surprised at the large number using maps, however, as there are plenty of competing services that many businesses directly link to.
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One key skill that most newcomers to Japan need to learn is how to navigate the train system. To find out how the locals find their way around, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by goo Research into looking up train routes and connections.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 25th of February 2008 1,095 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% were male, 16.2% were in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.3% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 15.8% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

As I’m quite familiar with the train routes around my local area, I usually look up my route on Yahoo! Transit to find the approximate journey time then commit the stations to change at to memory. One option I see missing from the list below, however, is taking a mobile phone photograph of a QR code that contains a web address representing the route. I thought that Yahoo! Transit supported such a feature, but it seems that’s their maps only.

Photo by tantek
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I’ve always meant to get into Social Network Services (or Sites), but just never had the time, or quite frankly the inclination! To see what the Japanese are thinking about them these days, japan.internet.com reported on the 11th regular SNS survey conducted by goo Research.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 13th February 2008 1,097 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% of the sample was male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 12.3% aged sixty or older.

There really ought to be a specialised Japan blogger SNS or other forum for exchange of ideas and the like; I know that I have far more ideas than I have time to realise them, so some way to allow us all to keep in touch would be most useful. There has been moves by the Daily J, but it really needs someone to grab the bull by the horns and give it a good kick up the backside. I’d love to do it myself, but time is the one thing I do not have.
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