世論 What Japan Thinks

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Between the 18th of January and the 4th of February the Cabinet Office Japan conducted a survey into what people thought about society.

Demographics

10,000 people were selected randomly from all Japanese citizens aged 20 or older for face-to-face interviews. 5,585 people were available and agreed to take part. 54.5% of the sample was female, 7.9% in their twenties, 14.8% in their thirties, 15.2% in their forties, 21.0% in their fifties, 20.8% in their sixties, 15.4% in their seventies, and 4.8% aged 80 or older. 74.6% were married, 11.8% were divorced or widowed, and 13.5% never married.

This first part is rather depressing, as can be seen in Q4 and Q5 where people see the darker side of society much more clearly, although this can be offset by the personal society-oriented opinions expressed in the earlier questions. I’m not sure exactly what Q6A and Q6B are saying. Successful people, on the whole, get there due to effort, but perhaps “successful” here refers to people who inherit rather than work for their wealth, such as many politicians or ex-politicians who land cushy jobs on retirement due to the practise of amakudari.
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After having looked at rice consumption in January, as a sort-of follow-up, over the first five days of March MyVoice asked their online monitor community about rice cookers.

Demographics

15,947 members osuccessfully completed the online questionnaire. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

IH is Induction Heating, which is… well, this site describes the process in detail.

Note that I don’t know if just boiling a pan of rice on the cooker counts as a rice cooker or not (although I suspect not), or if the traditional rice pan (I can’t remember the Japanese name of the iron pan with the wooden lid) does either (I suspect it might). As a pedagogical note, the Japanese for rice cooker is 炊飯器, suihanki, which “translates” kanji by kanji as boiling rice device
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Over one week at the start of March, infoPLANT conducted a survey by means of a public questionnaire available throughNTT DoCoMo’s iMode menuing system on the subject of online shopping habits. Note that since this is a self-selecting survey, attracting perhaps heavy mobile phone users, there might be some bias towards higher levels of shopping than in the average phone-owning population.

Demographics

6,398 people, 66.1% of them female, successfully completed the survey. 3.1% were in their teens, 33.0% in their twenties, 43.1% in their thirties, 17.7% in their forties, and 3.2% aged fifty or older.

I personally have never bought anything through a mobile phone web site as I restrict all my purchasing activity to a full-size computer, and I’m really surprised to see clothes doing so well, but in part that might be due to people choosing clothes through a paper catalogue then completing the order by mobile phone.
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Over five days at the start of March MyVoice surveyed their online community on the subject of staying at domestic high-class hotels chains. The survey uses the term “city hotels”, but what they refer to are three star or more posh hotel chains located usually in city centres or around airports targetted mainly at the higher-end business traveller, but also doing packages for leisure breaks for ordinary travellers, featuring facilities such as restaurants, swimming poll, shopping, fitness centre, etc.

Demographics

15,526 members of their online community successfully completed the survey; 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

Personally, I’ve stayed at about 7 of the chains mentioned, all of them for leisure, and never paid more than 15,000 yen per person including breakfast. It would have been interesting to see the survey split between leisure and business travellers, though. The ones I can recommend in the Kansai region are the Hyatt Regency Osaka Bayside for the overall quality (make sure you apply for a member’s card before you stay to get a free drink), the Hilton Umeda for the room decor (modern wa), Westin Awaji for a nice break in the countryside, and the Kansai International Airport Nikko for a high-quality buffet dinner and breakfast before you fly. I’m waiting for a cheap offer (under 25,000 yen per room is the target) for the Teikoku Hotel and the Ritz-Carlton. The only one I wouldn’t recommend would be the Zennikku/ANA Hotel in Kanazawa – nice free coffee and cake package, but small, dark rooms desperately in need of renovation, which admittedly they may have done since I stayed there about four years ago.

Oh, and do other people’s Japanese other halves clean out everything that’s not nailed down (well, the freebies at least) from every hotel you stay at? Anyone want to bid on three bars of Hilton soap on eBay?
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[part 1] [part 2]

Following up on the earlier survey on the Baby Boom generation, this time MacroMill interviewed 515 members of their online monitor group who are part of the Baby Boom generation, that is born between 1947 and 1949. All 515 were male, currently working for public or private employers.

Q4 is quite illuminating, in that almost two-thirds are worried about their financial security. While I suppose it is only natural that people hold concerns about losing all their earning powers, I still feel it seems excessively high. Why people worry would have been an interesting follow-on questions; is it a lack of pension provision, health care costs, NEET children to support, or even just an unwillingness to economise.

I think Q5 would have been more informative if they had also collected the data as a multiple of their final salary, not just a raw figure, as it is difficult to relate to the numbers without this information. Also, I’m not sure where one’s pension comes into the figures – I think even the earnings-related portion is separate from any lump sum.
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[part 1] [part 2]

Following up on the earlier survey on the Baby Boom generation, this time MacroMill interviewed 515 members of their online monitor group who are part of the Baby Boom generation, that is born between 1947 and 1949. All 515 were male, currently working for public or private employers.

It’s interesting to note in Q2 that most people are working because of financial issues, and barely one in fifty feels able to live comfortably off their nest egg.

I’d love to have seen a more direct question to the effect of “Do you want to spend more time with your family?” as the impression one gets of the baby boom generation is that they have a Calvanistic work attitude (although Q2A doesn’t back this up), or at least have spent so long being a company man they don’t know how to be anything else.

In addition, given another recent survey I translated which had a question on the new divorce law regarding pensions (see Q8), perhaps asking how many worried about their wife divorcing for half their pension would have been interesting.
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into the subject of characters, here meaning mainly celebrity or cartoon character items, of the sort you see dangling off every other phone, it seems.

Demographics

Over the 14th and 15 of March 300 internet users responded to their survey. The group was split 50:50 male and female, and 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.

I don’t think I’d go as far as downloading audio samples from cartoons or movies, but I must admit to liking some of the SAN-X stuff, especially Monokuro-boo, and would love to find some low-cost deco-mail clip art – the only site I found was 300 yen per month. For the time being, however, I make do with copying all the Lisa and Gaspard icons from my wife’s mobile! As I think I’ve mentioned before, Frente Spiral’s web site has a lot of nice free Pinky-Monkey wallpaper and icons for your mobile.
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infoPLANT recently released the results of a survey they conducted into the use of convenience stores. Over one week spanning the end of February and the start of March 5,305 users of DoCoMo’s iMode system chose to fill in a questionaire. 34.8% of the sample was male, 65.2% female.

I actually use them fairly infrequently, probably less than once a week, and most often it is to pay bills (you all do know you can pay most if not all utility bills at the major chains, with no extra fee charged?) or pay for tickets ordered online. If I do buy something, it’s more often than not just some bottled water, usually the cheapest in the store.
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Having looked at rice in January, in February MyVoice moved on to bread. Over the first five days at the start of February 13,232 members of their online community completed a private internet-based questionnaire.

Demographics

46% of the 13,232 people were male, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

I eat bread twice a day; once for breakfast usually with just water and sometimes jam on top; at the moment I have some nice cheap Chivers Ginger and Lime Preserve that we managed to find in an import shop. Lunchtime is also bread from a bakery by work, usually a cheese roll and one or two other breads, often sweet, but sometimes they also have nice rice or even tea rolls.

I am surprised, however, by the quite high frequency of bread eating; I would have thought it might have been lower, but perhaps if we saw the detailed statistics we could learn something by cross-referencing age or sex versus frequency of eating.

Incidentally, Tokyo Times had a recent rather entertaining piece on Japanese bread.
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infoPLANT recently took a look at one of the first things that strikes many visitors to these shores, the interest in and habits surrounding high-class brand-name clothes, accessories and jewelry. Although this research was conducted by infoPLANT’s usual method of a self-selecting call for participants sent out through NTT DoCoMo’s iMode menuing system, the self-selecting nature should not have too averse an effect on the replies, I believe.

Demographics

Over a week between the 20th and 27th of February, 4,989 mobile phone users successfully completed the survey. 34.9% of the group was male, 2.8% were in their teens, 32.8% in their twenties, 43.1% in their thirties, 18.3% in their forties, and 2.9% aged fifty or older.

I don’t think I’ve actually ever bought a posh brand item myself, and the only interest I have in them is ensuring I drag wifey away as quickly as possible whenever she sets her eyes upon them! She used to be quite a bit of a brand freak, but she’s mostly recovered now! As I’ve got small wrists, I can’t even wear the average posh watch without it looking far too chunky, not that I’d want to anyway, as Rolex wearers always gives me the impression of being dodgy second-hand car salesmen.
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