世論 What Japan Thinks

With a new government in place I was hoping for a more interesting set of expectations from the Japanese government, but the goo Ranking results were quite frankly bland.

Demographics

On the 19th of November 2009 1,166 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 59.9% of the sample were female, 13.4% in their teens, 20.6% in their twenties, 28.2% in their thirties, 23.2% in their forties, 8.3% in their fifties, and 6.3% aged sixty or older.

My number one hope is for a country where the Prime Minister has vision, and can implement that vision. Koizumi did, but the three guys following him had nothing or just wooly dreams of a “beautiful country”, and now we have a guy whose wife has visions, but he is wasting all his political capital trying to keep the two miniscule minority parties happy with his “fraternity” ideal.
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Thinking about your New Year Resolutions? This recent ranking survey from goo Ranking into what people wish they’d put more effort into this year might give you a hint or two.

Demographics

On the 19th of November 2009 1,166 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 59.9% of the sample were female, 13.4% in their teens, 20.6% in their twenties, 28.2% in their thirties, 23.2% in their forties, 8.3% in their fifties, and 6.3% aged sixty or older.

I think last year I did pretty well with networking outside the company by putting more effort into LinkedIn, but internal networking could be improved, but given the average corporate drone in the office, the motivation is just not there!
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Let’s end the year on a low point, by looking at a recent survey from iShare into how 2009 was financially.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 24th of December 2009 505 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.6% of the sample were male, 30.7% in their twenties, 33.3% in their thirties, and 36.0% in their forties.

2009 was pretty horrendous for me – I recently got my end of year tax summary which showed that my salary was down close to 10% due to both stealth cuts through the bonus system and a renegotation of the overtime system which results in more money in my monthly pay-packet but less in the bonus. Also this year our mortgage discount rate ran out, which was another few percentage off the family budget. On the What Japan Thinks front, AdSense revenue has never recovered from two years ago when it suddenly died for reasons that were never too clear. Traffic is about double from then, but click-through and earnings per click are down. I’ve never really managed to understand affiliate advertising, despite many attempts…
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Yahoo! Value Insight recently published the results of their look into your 2009 and 2010.

Demographics

Between the 2nd and 4th of December 2009 1,000 members of the Yahoo! Value Insight monitor panel. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, 17.6% in their twenties, 22.1% in their thirties, 19.3% in their forties, 20.9% in their fifties, and 20.1% in their sixties.

My kanji to sum up my year from a work perspective would probably be 鬱, which I’ll leave you to look up. My in vogue items would be masks (not me personally, though) and limited edition snacks – this year it’s not just millions of Kit-Kat flavours, but just about every brand has been pumping out a new limited edition every month. This month alone I’ve bought the following limited editions: milk coffee and sparkling strawberry Kit-Kats, berry Pocky, two different kinds of strawberry Takenoko no Sato, strawberry Pie no Mori, and two other winter chocolates.
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In Japan, Yahoo! Auction rules the roost, and this recent survey from Media Interactive (iResearch) into Yahoo! Auction showed that they also had the payment side of the auction well-covered too.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 9th of December 2009 1,400 people who had won auctions on Yahoo! completed a private internet-based questionnaire, although how exactly they found the 1,400 winners was not described. 52.1% of the sample were male, 0.6% in their teens, 15.4% in their twenties, 35.6% in their thirties, 31.2% in their forties, 13.1% in their fifties, and 4.1% in their sixties.

Yahoo! Simple Checkout is not like the standard for Ebay auctions, PayPal, in that it is not a bank-like entity but instead a trusted go-between so that there is no direct exchange of banking details. Yahoo! Simple Checkout can also be used when shopping through Yahoo! services, so there is no need to give your credit card details to the shops, just your Yahoo! Simple Checkout details.
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Bah humbug! To get you into the Christmas spirit, or to give you something to grumble about this festive season, according to a survey from iShare into Santa Claus many (far too many!) Japanese teach their kids about Santa.

Demographics

Between the 3rd and 8th of December 2009 541 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.6% of the sample were male, 31.6% in their twenties, 31.4% in their thirties, and 37.0% in their forties.

Regarding Q3SQ1, I think I became aware due to a combination of playground talk and discovering Santa’s present stash hidden in a cupboard. I wouldn’t want to teach my kids about Santa and would probably try to combine the event with the existing Japanese tradition of Otoshi-dama, presents of cash at the New Year. I’m not sure about Q3SQ2 – do Japanese parents regularly dress up to hand out the gifts to kids? My parents always sneaked in when we were asleep, and I always imagined that was standard behaviour.

I’ll be out myself for an evening on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day after work, but we’ll be trying to avoid the Christmas menus! My wife’s off to the dentist, in fact, this Christmas Day!
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It’s coming up to the New Year, and one of the traditional television events is NHK’s Kohaku Uta Gassen, or the Red and White Song Contest, where a team of male singers and male-fronted groups compete against the female side in an excuse to highlight the popular music of the year, both pops and the traditional Enka form. There’s usually about twenty to thirty acts per side and the whole affair starts around 7 pm and continues until just before midnight. However, this year the satellite channel BS11 is showing the Anison Kohaku 2009, Red and White Animation Song 2009 at the same time, so iShare decided to conduct a survey into New Year song contest viewing plans.

Demographics

Between the 27th of November and the 2nd of December 2009 515 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.4% of the sample were male, 31.5% in their twenties, 33.0% in their thirties, and 35.5% in their forties.

I’ll probably end up watching about half of NHK’s Kohaku. One interesting feature this year is the appearance of Yutaka Oe, a young Enka singer infatuated with the legendary Saburo Kitajima, and who got his break through Sanma’s Karakuri Television, where he often appears bumbling his way through his singing career. One line I remember was when he got taken out for dinner with people from his record label; they went to a Chinese and were served a whole roast chicken, whereupon he asked the waiter in all innocence if it was a small dog.

I can compare his career to Susan Boyle’s, as there was a lot of talk in her case that she had some form of learning difficulty and there has been many feeling she has been exploited. However, in Yutaka Oe’s case, when he was a child he was involved in a traffic accident, suffered brain damage and missed much of his schooling, yet even his illiteracy has been the butt of jokes.

Here’s a YouTube video of him in action, but as embedding is disabled, please follow this link.

He’s throwing the opening ball at a baseball match, but he wore his right-handed glove instead of his left, which explains his first pitch..
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Since most Japanese mobile phones these days support HTML-styled email with embedded graphics and font selection, it is not surprising that as with computer email, mobile phone newsletter publishers are also now delivering their wares in a more flashy form. To find out the extent of this, japan.internet.com reported on the relevant part of goo Research’s 12th regular mobile phone users’ computer use survey.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 10th of December 2009 1,060 mobile phone-using members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private mobile phone-based questionnaire. 55.6% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 27.3% in their twenties, 31.7% in their thirties, 18.1% in their forties, and 6.3% aged fifty or older.

Decomail (sometimes shortened to just decome) is short for decoration mail, which means at its simplest HTML-based email, but usually implies embedded graphics.

I once got a picture-laden newsletter from the masters of spam agressive marketing, Rakuten, but I soon cancelled as I realised I was paying about 20 yen in packet charges just to look at the email! I still get about three newsletters to my mobile, but they are all just plain text.
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‘Tis the season where colleagues go out drinking to a 忘年会, bonenkai, the forget the year party, and at these times usually the most junior person in the office has the responsibility of organising the booze-up. So, goo Ranking decided to look at what failures and what trouble befell organisers.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 26th of October 2009 1,162 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 62.9% of the sample were female, 10.5% in their teens, 20.7% in their twenties, 30.8% in their thirties, 21.9% in their forties, 9.0% in their fifties, and 7.0% aged sixty or older.

Just in case you’re not familiar with these parties, they are basically compulsory, organised at a local low-end eating place with a two-hour plan of party trays at the table with free drink. The usual budget is 4,000 to 5,000 yen.

I cannot remember any particular failure from the organisers of parties I’ve attended, although there’s the usual trouble of no-one gathering at the required time and stragglers coming in halfway through.
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One great feature of many Japanese supermarkets and department store food floors is that they often have tasting corners, the subject of a recent survey from iShare.

Demographics

Between the 26th of November and the 1st of December 2009 542 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.5% of the sample were male, 30.3% in their twenties, 33.6% in their thrities, and 36.2% in their forties.

Whenever there’s free sweets, cake or fruit I’m always sure to grab a bite or two, and will occasionally partake of other free samples. One always hears stories about people effectively having full meals by circulating around the free sample locations, but I’ve never tried it for myself. A lot of the posh department stores also have alcohol tasting corners – I wonder if it’s possible to drink enough to get drunk? I’ll have to try one day…

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