世論 What Japan Thinks

For some reason that I am not quite familiar with, a recent craze in Japan is Buddhist statues, which was the subject of this survey from iShare.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 25th of June 2009 553 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.1% of the sample were male, 38.9% in their twenties, 30.6% in their thirties, and 30.6% in their forties.

This seems like a good excuse to remind my readers that my Buddhist name is The Boy Craving-Filled Head. What’s yours?

I do like visiting temples myself, and the Nara National Museum has a huge collection of statues and other Buddhist treasures, and is well worth a visit.
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Here’s an interesting little survey from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into gourmet site usage.

Demographics

Between the 9th and 12th of July 2009 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split exactly 50:50 male and female, 1.7% of the sample were in their teens, 18.3% 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 use the word “gourmet” above as the Japanese also use that loan word to describe eating out, although perhaps it does sound a bit too fancy in English.

I personally only rarely used Guru-navi (an abbreviation of an approximation of “gourmet navigation”), and only when I have a specific restaurant in mind and want to check for discount coupons! They have a small English sub-site, if you want to check that out – note none of the others linked below have an English version.
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As the average Japanese man does just the least amount of housework amongst the developed nations, perhaps that is one reason that this survey from iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com found that robotic home appliances were viewed favourably by many Japanese women.

Demographics

On the 29th of June 2009 300 female members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 19.3% of the sample were in their twenties, 38.3% in their thirties, 26.7% in their forties, 11.7% in their fifties, and 4.0% in their sixties.

Q1SQ1 asked about “domestic appliance robots” and “Robotic domestic appliances”; I think the difference that this is trying to highlight is a general purpose robotic helper (your very own personal ASIMO) versus a single-purpose item with autonomic actions, such as the Roomba cleaner.
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The slightly mysterious title for this post introduces a short survey from iShare that looks at shoe purchase and disposal.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 23rd of June 2009 566 mobile phone-owning members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire, 53.5% of the sample were male, 37.6% in their twenties, 30.4% in their thirties, and 32.0% in their forties.

I most often buy my shoes from 歩人館, hojinkan, a national chain of shoe shops that deals only in ASICS shoes. The designs are sensible rather than trendy, but the shoes are good and solid and last a long time.
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MyVoice recently took their fifth look at shampoo usage. I’m sure I’d translated an earlier version of this survey, but Google says otherwise!

Demographics

Over the first five days of June 2009 14,982 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older.

My choice of shampoo and conditioner is Umi no Uruoi Sou, a blend of lots of different kinds of seaweed, apparently. I got into the habit of using it as for about two years a local drugstore sold the refills at 99 yen each, which was nice. When I’m not using that, I’m using mini shampoo bottles brought back as trophies from hotels I have stayed in.
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I’ve never eaten a convenience store bento (boxed lunch) as I am yet to see a vegetarian offering; the best I did when I was single was a Lawson’s tomato pasta, which was particularly disgusting. However, that doesn’t seem to bother many people in this survey from MyVoice into convenience store boxed lunches.

Demographics

Over the first five days of June 2009 15,023 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 14% in their twenties, 36% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older.

The actual title of this survey, and coincidentally the name of a sadly deceased (the blog, not the blogger!) gaijin blogger’s blog, is the commonly used abbreviation, conbini bento.
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This recent survey from DIMSDRIVE Research into pets had interesting information regarding insurance, but sadly the number of pets per person were not reported, a figure that would have helped in understanding some of the numbers.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 26th of March 2009 10,501 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 50:50 male and female (one more female than male, but she was lost in rounding), 1.1% were in their teens, 13.1% in their twenties, 33.8% in their thirties, 30.6% in their forties, 14.7% in their fifties, and 6.7% aged sixty or older. Additional demographic information included 51.4% lived in a house, 33.5% in a flat, 12.7% in an apartment, and 2.4% in other accommodation.

I really don’t like pet shops in Japan at all; the cages on display are far too small, and they take the animals away from their mothers too early – about six weeks is the standard figure, while they are still cute enough to sell. I remember last year seeing one male kitten that was so desparate for mother’s milk that it had taken to sucking his own nipple, pulling out a lot of his own hair and leaving a big ugly raw-red mark on his chest.
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If I’d translated this one yesterday I could have been all nice and happy and bright, but since it’s today, you’ll have to accept my translation of MyVoice’s look at stress – their third look, and I translated their second stress survey here – being done under pressure.

Demographics

Over the first five days of June 2009 14,878 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 14% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older.

Ahh, work decided today to change the information security rules; it’s not quite RFID tagging everything and setting up automated machine-gun nests at the exits to discipline offenders, but it’s getting there. The main cause of concern seems to be memory cards getting lost; the sensible measure would be to turn on an option in the system management software that everyone has that automatically encrypts all writes to memory cards, but instead we just get excessively-strict tracking of cards, which ignores the fact that the losses happened due to people ignoring the simpler rules. They are also suggesting that there might be a new rule that effectively makes taking a mobile phone or audio player to work impractical. Idiots.

Then on the way out of the office, one guy stopped walking right in front of me just outside the gate, I moved round and almost got run over by a cyclist, then the communist party were making a racket outside the station. I swore at the guy who tried to give me a leaflet, which did make me feel a little better.
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Given the high level of ownership of digital cameras reported in this survey from goo Research and featured on japan.internet.com, one has to wonder, as the question wasn’t answered in the article, why almost half the people manage less than 5 gigabytes of stored images.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 9th of June 2009 1,042 members of the goo Research monitor group completed an internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 17.7% in their twenties, 21.3% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 12.8% aged sixty or older.

On the other hand, Q3 asks specifically about photographs one has taken oneself, and since it is the wife who usually uses the camera, probably less than 2 GB of the 20 GB or more is actually mine…
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With Father’s Day being next weekend, here’s a timely look with DIMSDRIVE Research at a popular gift for this time of year, electric razors.

Demographics

Between the 13th and 28th or May 2009 9,897 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 50.3% of the sample were male, 1.0% in their teens, 13.0% in their twenties, 34.4% in their thirties, 30.3% in their forties, 15.1% in their fifties, and 6.2% aged sixty or older. 63.5% of the sample were married, although I don’t know if that has any significance towards the results.

Both my electric shavers have been presents from the wife. The first was a rather naff Hitachi single-headed alkali battery-operated one that required me to use a razor once a week or more to catch all the bits that it missed, and my current Braun was free via credit card mileage points. I use shaving gel to set up my skin, and barring quite poor performance around the Adam’s apple area, I’m quite happy.

You’ll note that there is no question “do you have a beard, thus no need to shave?”, or even asking how the beard trimming features of the shaver is.
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