世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com, in conjection with JR Tokai Express Research, conducted a survey on the awareness of the Google brand in Japan. They interviewed by means of an internet-based survey 331 people, 70.4% male, all of whom worked in either the public or the private sector. 39.3% were in their twenties, 36.0% in their thirties, 23.9% in their forties, no-one in their fifties, and just 0.9% aged sixty or older. The sample was drawn from all over the country.

I’m not surprised at Blogger’s usage being so low, since I do not believe it has a Japanese interface, and anyway a previous survey has shown a preference for Japan-based blogging services. However, the large number of Google earth users really surprised me! Whether the respondents were confusing it with Google Maps, or if people just used it once or twice to find their house, I do not know.
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With stories about the dangers of Winny flying around, japan.internet.com jumped on the bandwagon (see my previous stories on Winny usage and the greatest security threats of 2005), publishing a survey carried out in conjuction with goo Research to find out about people’s use of file sharing software. They interviewed 1,071 people from their internet monitor group. 41.6% of the respondents were male, 23.2% in their twenties, 44.1% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, and 7.5% in their fifties.

This survey talks about confidential data leakage due to Winny viruses, but I have not seen any information that confirms it is due to viruses, and not just down to people sharing their whole hard disk or the like.

I did once or twice use Winny, but gave up as first the download rate was unbelievably slow, second the selection of material was pretty poor (or my understanding of Japanese was), and third it was, as is much Japanese user interface design, incredibly cluttered and unintuitive for me to use.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with JR Tokai Express Research, at the start of March performed a study to find out what people thought regarding their Internet Service Provider (ISP). They interviewed by means of an internet-based questionnaire 330 people, 54.2% male, resident in the Kanto area. 26.4% of the respondents were in their twenties, 46.1% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 5.8% in their fifties, and just 1.8% in their sixties.

I find the results here a little difficult to believe, although the respondents all lived in Kanto (Tokyo and surrounding areas), so there would tend to be a distinct bias towards fatter pipes since most, if not all, of the Tokyo exchanges are wired for ADSL, and ADSL prices these days are barely much more than that of a phone line. In addition, perhaps the people who sign up to be survey monitors do tend to have better internet connections than the average person. I am not convinced of the accurancy at all.

Broadband is one of the few things in Japan that is actually cheap – for instance I pay around 2500 yen for up to 10 megabits; we have 100 megabits Fibre To The Home (FTTH) connection to our block of flats, and I share the line with the 32 other homes (although apparently only a handful use it), with the price is slightly subsidised out of the general flat management fees.

With regards to Q2. for me personally my ISP experience has been PRESTEL (1200/75!) -> CompuServe (dialup, first taste of the internet) -> CIX (dialup) -> Demon (dialup) -> GOL (ISDN) -> Jens SpinNet (ADSL) -> Hi-Ho (ADSL) -> Plala (FFTH).
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In the middle of March this year iShare surveyed the users of their CLUB BBQ mail forwarding service to see what they thought about file-sharing (or P2P) software. They got replies from 783 people, 74% male, but no age breakdown is available.

The most (in)famous P2P program in Japan is Winny, which has been responsible for rather a few data leaks. To be strictly correct, however, the software is not responsible, it’s the user for not knowing how to set it up correctly that’s the problem, along with lax security that allows people to install dodgy software on work computers, or to place confidential information on their home PCs. See also my other recent article that ranks it as the second greatest threat of 2005!

Note that since people are being asked to describe how they may be breaking the law, there might be some degree of reluctance for people to answer truthfully, so perhaps the true rate of file-sharing within this survey group is higher than reported. Note also that the population that has been surveyed here is perhaps a bit heavy on otaku.

Finally, BitTorrent is P2P but has a decent number of legitimate uses – how did that affect the results obtained? Is it even well-known in Japan?

UPDATE: translated and published another file sharing software use poll.
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japan.internet.com and JR Tokai Express Research recently conducted a survey to find out about 迷惑メール , meiwaku me-ru, nuisance mail literally, or unsolicited mail, or simply just spam. They interviewed 330 mobile phone owners, 60% male, from all around the country by means of an internet-based survey. The sample consisted of 25.2% in the their twenties, 43.0% in their thirties, 21.5% in their forties, 7.6% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.

Initially, mobile phones’ email address defaulted to just the telephone number; in fact, when I first came to Japan my phone had no option for even changing the mail address. Now, with the increased awareness (and increased incidence too) of spam, DoCoMo at least (presumably the other carriers do similar things) give new customers a default email address that consists of their phone number plus a few extra random characters to defeat dictionary attacks.

I personally have got zero spam, mainly as I have a user name that is in no Japanese dictionary and I don’t sign up with dodgy sites that might leak mail addresses.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at the perception of online DVD rental. They interviewed 1,061 people from their monitor group at the start of March by means of an internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 43.3% male, with 25.0% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 24.5% in their forties, and 9.0% in their fifties.

I haven’t rented a DVD since I got married, although perhaps before I did I might have investigated one of these companies, as I heard a bit about NetFlix from USA residents, and my local Tsutaya had a pretty thin collection of DVDs. Now, I don’t have enough time to even just catch up with what we record off cable! However, if I could find a cheap portable player – about Nintendo DS size with one face all screen, and an SD memory card slot – I’d snap one up in an instant for viewing on the train. The PSP and its UMD just look a bit too bulky and perhaps battery-hungry for my needs. I’d love to catch up on Monkey, both the original and the new versions, for instance.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, investigated how people use television stations’ web sites; both PC-centric and mobile phone-targetted sites were included. By means of an internet-based questionnaire, they obtained the opinions of 317 employed persons from all over the country; 71.3% were male, 22.1% in their twenties, 43.5% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, 7.6% in their fifties, and 1.6% sixty or over.

This survey, I feel, poses more questions than it answers. Which programs’ sub-sites within each channel’s offering are people choosing to view? Getting program details covers too broad a ground from just getting a synopsis for a movie to checking out some of the factual (or not quite so factual, as the case may be) information presented by a show after the broadcast. Why did Q1SQ2 not investigate if people gave feedback to shows or played web site games? What about different usage patterns for PC-based and mobile-based access? I suspect these answers may be obtained if one is willing to part with cash, though!
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japan.internet.com carried out a survey amongst 1,094 members of the goo monitor group (the split by sex is not recorded, but the text implies that it was all female) to find out how people use internet hotel reservation services. In the surveyed group, 2.1% were teenagers, 25.2% were in their twenties, 39.5% were in their thirties, 24.3% were in their forties, and 8.9% were in their fifties.

According to an as-yet untranslated by me survey last September on how women obtain word-of-mouth (or should that really be word-of-fingertips?) information from the internet, their top genres for picking up the buzz off the internet were make-up, dining, travel and clothes sites in that order, although four in five never added their own two yen to these sites, and just two percent regularly chimed in.
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japan.internet.com released a short survey, carried out at the start of February in conjunction with goo Research to find out about how people use web mail services. This is the tenth time they have performed this survey, once every month since May 2005. 1,090 people, 46.8% male, from up and down the country completed the internet-based questionnaire. 2.1% were teenagers, 22.5% were in their twenties, 40.6% were in their thirties, 24.3% were in their forties, 7.4% in their fifties, and just 3.0% aged sixty or over.

Given that according to another survey, one in five Japanese has tried dating sites, I find that only 2% have used a web mail address for this purpose suprising. Perhaps the rest used their mobile phones or an alternative form of aliasing; my main provider, for instance, offers up to five aliases, selectable from not just standard @isp.ne.jp, but vanity ones like @teabreak.jp. Or perhaps people just lied more here!

Note that when the provider usage statistics below are compared to an earlier survey on brand image, goo performs better here than its brand image suggests, and Hotmail worse.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with JR Tokai Express Research, carried out an internet-based survey of 330 people employed by national and local government, and by private enterprises to find out how well they knew various English computer-related buzzwords and acronyms. The sample was 72.7% male, with 23.0% in their twenties, 42.7% in their thirties, 24.8% in their forties, 9.1% in their fifties, and just 0.3% aged sixty or over. Note that those interviewed are not necessarily IT specialists, or even IT users, in their workplace.

Note that the questions are testing to see how confident the respondents are in their knowledge, not if they are correct or not. I do remember one incident at work regarding the GPL (actually, I remember lots of incidents with lots of technical terms) where one senior person was holding forth at length and with great confidence about a certain aspect of it but was, in fact, talking utter cobblers.

I’m rather surprised at FTTH scoring almost double of RSS and SNS, though. As far as I am aware, FTTH is rarely used in advertising for high-speed home internet access; it is usually just fibre-optic (光ファイバー, hikari faiba-) or NTT’s trademark B-FLET’S (B for Broadband, F for “flat rates, friendly Internet access, and a flexible environment”, and “Let’s” for “Let’s IP Service”).

How well do you do in knowing these terms?
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