世論 What Japan Thinks

Although the traditional time for ghost stories in the West is around Halloween, in Japan it is summer as the chill ghost stories send down your spine cools you off in the summer heat, or so the theory goes. To find out what people thought about this, iShare took a look at scary stories.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 24th of July 2009 509 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.4% of the sample were male, 33.8% in their twenties, 29.7% in their thirties, and 36.5% in their forties.

I am disappointed that the fundamental question “do you believe in ghosts?” was not asked. According to the survey that was the spur behind the creation of What Japan Thinks, in Q3 only 27.0% do not believe that anything supernatural exists. If you do believe they exist, please visit James Randi’s site and find out not why they don’t exist, but why no-one has been able to demonstrate in a properly-designed experiment that they do.
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No, it’s not a new adult video from Japan, but instead one of a pair of surveys about techniques people use to get into their spouse’s good books, for both men currying favour with their wives and women currying favour with their husbands. Oh, and if you haven’t guessed already, this one too is of course from goo Ranking.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 24th of June 2009 1,180 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.6% of the sample were female, 10.3% were in their teens, 22.9% in their twenties, 31.5% in their thirties, 19.2% in their forties, 9.6% in their fifties, and 6.4% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

This is a great list! However, for number 7, keep listening until she’s said everything, if I did that I could spend all day at it… Number 2, taking the initiative on the housework, wouldn’t work for me as evn though I do the majority (just) at the weekend, helping with her half is difficult as she’s very particular, even down to the colour of clothes pegs to use when hanging out the washing!

From my point of view, her curry and stew are probably her best way to butter me up, followed by a day where not just me, but both of us needn’t do much more than the basic housework. We had one of these days today, which was nice.
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Despite the iPod and iPhone being a reasonable success in Japan, Apple are not seeing the benefit in terms of Mac sales, according to this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research into home computers, with a look in particular at the upcoming Windows 7.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 26th of July 2009 1,086 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.4% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 11.9% aged sixty or older.

I use Windows Vista only at home, which does work well for everything I want to do, so I don’t see any reason why I should bother upgrading to Windows 7, especially given that since I run the Ultimate version as it’s the only one to support multiple languages, the upgrade price will be pretty high, I suspect.
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[part 1][part 2]

Shortly after the lay judge system was introduced in Japan earier this year, but before the first actual trial involving members of the public, the Cabinet Office Japan conducted a survey on behalf of the Ministry of Justice into the lay judge system.

Demographics

Between the 28th of May and 7th of June 2009 3,000 members of the public were randomly selected to participate in the survey, conducted by face-to-face interviews. 68.5% of the sample, or 2,054, were available and agreed to answer the questionnaire. 46.3% of them were male, 9.9% in their twenties, 16.0% in their thirties, 17.9% in their forties, 18.0% in their fifties, 21.1% in their sixties, and 17.0% aged seventy or older.

Japan Probe recently published a story from a tip of mine on a curious 3D animated reconstruction of the first lay judge trial, which I hope you find entertainly weird too.

Now, the first trial has completed, one where the defendant admitted to murdering a South Korean neighbour, but the trial was more about sentencing. The prosecution wanted 16 years, lawyers representing the victim’s family wanted 20 or more, but the defence said that their client had been provoked and felt 16 years was too long. As I alluded to in the first part of the survey, many armchair gaijin pundits were sure that he’d get off with a minimal sentence as it was only a foreigner he killed, or that the lay people would not dare disagree with the judge. The actual outcome was that he got 15 years,
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[part 1][part 2]

Shortly after the lay judge system was introduced in Japan earier this year, but before the first actual trial involving members of the public, the Cabinet Office Japan conducted a survey on behalf of the Ministry of Justice into the lay judge system.

Demographics

Between the 28th of May and 7th of June 2009 3,000 members of the public were randomly selected to participate in the survey, conducted by face-to-face interviews. 68.5% of the sample, or 2,054, were available and agreed to answer the questionnaire. 46.3% of them were male, 9.9% in their twenties, 16.0% in their thirties, 17.9% in their forties, 18.0% in their fifties, 21.1% in their sixties, and 17.0% aged seventy or older.

My pet hate about the new system is that too many people, including reputable newspapers who should know better, call it a jury system and think it must be unfair because it differs from the UK and US systems that they are familiar with. Here the lay judges get a chance to question the victim and they sit in deliberation with the professional judges to decide not just guilt or innocence, but also the sentencing.

My second pet hate is… ah, I have a million and one pet hates about the cynical, and quite often flat-out racist attitudes adopted by many ex-pats in Japan regarding how badly they believe the lay judges will perform. I invite them all to use this survey to back up their prejudices, if they can.
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I’ve always found Japanese saying “You’re good with chopsticks” such an empty compliment as a lot of them seem pretty poor themselves, and if they ever get loose on a knife and fork it’s often a total disaster. Perhaps what they are saying is that they themselves are no good with a knife and fork, a situation that this survey from iShare seems to back up.

Demographics

Between the 15th and 21st of July 2009 574 members of the free email forwarding service CLUB BBQ completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.3% of the sample were male, 32.6% in their twenties, 31.0% in their thirties, and 36.2% in their forties.

Just thinking about it, one problem my wife has is pressing the knife down when cutting things; most Westerners (I hope! Or at least most Europeans do…) hold knives like we hold our pens, with the index finger straight out, but Japanese tend to hold pens in their fists, so perhaps the correct position is unfamiliar and uncomfortable to them.

I’d also have loved to have seen them asked if they can eat spaghetti without slurping or without holding their face a few centimetres above the place and shovelling the pasta in with both fork and spoon together.
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In the survey on Skype I translated in July, I bemoaned the fact that there was no information about who people were calling, so I was glad to see japan.internet.com report on another survey about Skype, this time from iBridge Research.

Demographics

On the 27th of July 2009 300 members of the iBridge research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.0% of the sample were male, 10.0% in their twenties, 38.3% in their thirties, 38.0% in their forties, 10.3% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties.

I encountered my first serious problem with Skype last week. I needed to phone a UK free dial number, so I called up on Skype, and even though I was within office hours I got a recorded message saying that the office was closed and to call back the next day. However, I used my mobile instead and got through straight away, which was rather annoying.
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goo Ranking recently conducted their 10th regular survey into digital terrestrial television, a survey reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Betwen the 17th and 22nd of July 2009 1,079 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 17.8% in their twenties, 21.0% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 15.9% in their fifties, and 1.1% aged sixty or older.

I don’t believe that having the greatest reason for dissatisfaction being DRM, Digital Rights Management, is in itself a condemnation of copy control on digital broadcasts, as I would guess that the vast majority of people are either (or both) unaware of the presence of DRM or never do any activities that run into these restrictions.

Note that analogue broadcasts stop on the 24th of July 2011. One thing that has struck me as odd is that there is very little advertising for converter boxes in Japan; a few thousand yen gives a new lease of life to any television. When visiting my parents back in the UK last year they had a cheap box that produced a very acceptable picture on their 15 year old telly.
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From next weekend it’s the summer holidays for most Japanese workers, so goo Ranking took a look at what summer activity people think would be a good way to get their date alone, for both men and women.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 24th of June 2009 1,180 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.6% of the sample were female, 10.3% were in their teens, 22.9% in their twenties, 31.5% in their thirties, 19.2% in their forties, 9.6% in their fifties, and 6.4% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

I’m split between whether the results of this survey are sweet and innocent, or naive and repressed. Watching fireflies is a good answer, but water pistol fights? Doing dares? I’m also not sure how beach volleyball fits in – is it one-on-one? Two-a-side mixed doubles?
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One of the biggest differences in standard mobile phone usage between Japan and the West is that almost every phone here supports full internet email by default, with for at least the last three or four years support for HTML graphic email, and even now simple Flash authoring, and older handsets even have a fall-back mode to allow them to view graphic mail online. On the other hand, the West is still wedded to SMS. With that in mind, let’s have a look at a recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into computer usage of mobile phone users.

Demographics

Between the 10th and 14th of July 2009 1,048 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private mobile phone based questionnaire. 54.5% of the sample were female, 2.8% in their teens, 26.6% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 23.5% in their forties, and 5.8% aged fifty or older.

Note that to register as a goo Research monitor one must first sign up with a computer (or a mobile phone with a full browser), then join their mobile monitor group, so as can be seen below, all bar one percent of the sample also have a computer, which does bias the sample one way. However, most mobile-only surveys tend to bias the sample towards heavier mobile users, but even with this bias, the high number who treat their mobile phone as their main email tool is quite surprising to me.
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