世論 What Japan Thinks

Today is Valentine’s Day, so let’s have a look at two silly wee surveys from goo Ranking, asking women what they find tough on Valentine’s Day, and what differences they notice in men on or just before Valentine’s Day.

Demographics

Note that the obligatory chocolates for everyone in the office are basically a chore rather than an expression of gratitude, as with many other situations where gifts must be passed, the feelings of thanks have disappeared to be replaced by just a sense of formality.

For your enjoyment, here is a recap of the Valentine surveys I’ve looked at over the years:

• Valentine present reception FAIL!
• Valentine present giving FAIL
• Miserable Valentine’s Day
• Improving your chocolate reception chances
• Macromill Valentine’s 2009
• Macromill Valentine’s 2007

Oh, and Watashi to Tokyo had a list of men’s favourite everyday chocolate snacks.

Heart Warmy picture from Robert Sanzalone on flickr.
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Following up on yesterday’s broken digital cameras, today we look with goo Research again, reported on by japan.internet.com, into hard disk faults.

Demographics

Over the 27th and 28th of January 2009 1,092 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.7% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.7% in their twenties, 21.2% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 15.3% in their fifties, and 12.3% aged sixty or older.

I had a hard disk crash a few years ago and lost perhaps 20% of my photo collection. I now use Vista’s built-in backup tool to do weekly backups, but I’m not convinced at all that it is backing up everything it should be, and it has a funny habit of spewing out errors on boot-up on days it isn’t running. Can anyone recommend a cheap or free backup to DVD software package for Vista?
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Here’s one of these subjects for a survey that make me scratch my head and wonder why they really asked this. This time japan.internet.com reported on a survey by goo Research into broken digital cameras.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 27th of January 2009 1,083 members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% of the sample were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

As all I have is a cheap and cheerful compact digitial camera I’ve never thought that it might have the facility for a firmware upgrade; given the rate of model turnover buying a new camera is the only way of getting a new version! I’ve of course heard about upgrades for digital SLRs, but let me check the support web site for my camera – oh, they do have firmware upgrades even for the compact cameras! It doesn’t tell you what they do, however…
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Following up on my look at women’s Valentine gift-giving FAILs, here is goo Ranking again looking at what men were troubled by receiving on Valentine’s Day.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 22nd of December 2008 1,039 members of the goo Research monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The reported sex split was exactly 50.00% male and 50.00% female, a figure that one will instantly see is wrong, so for the sake of argument I’ll round it up to 520 females and down to 519 males. 7.6% of the sample were in their teens, 15.6% in their twenties, 28.0% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 10.3% 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. Note also this question was for men only, as the day is mainly for women to give stuff to men.

Last year my female boss (I hope she doesn’t read my blog!) gave all the guys in the office a huge bar of Wonka chocolate which was a FAIL on a number of counts – too big, too sweet, and pretty disgusting, quite frankly. Wifey has never had a giving FAIL (I hope she is reading this!) and last year I got a cuddly toy and some Hello Kitty boxers.
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Maybe I’ve just been in Japan too long, but I’ve recently noticed train phone manners going downhill, with talking on the phone being an obvious hate, but also people who leave their keypress beep on irritate me a lot. These feelings seemed to be shared by most people, according to this recent survey conducted by Point On Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into mobile use onboard trains.

Demographics

On the 2nd of February 2009 exactly 1,000 mobile phone using members of the Point On monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. Exactly 50.0% of the sample were female, 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% aged fifty or older.

When I go abroad this sort of behaviour doesn’t really bother me, perhaps because I am accepting that it is the social norm for the country I am visiting, or perhaps it is because I’m often trying to sleep on my daily commute.

The picture accompanying this post is a Tokyo manners poster, one of a series of posters they have produced, with today’s statistic added for a more accurate representation of the situation!
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Here’s an interesting survey from iShare that answers the questions that many westerners ask when they see the average Japanese mobile phone email littered with kaomoji smilies and decomail animations, simply “Why?”

Demographics

Over the 28th and 29th of January 2009 668 users of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.1% of the sample were male, 12.6% in their twenties, 46.1% in their thirties, 33.4% in their forties, 6.7% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their teens or sixty or older.

Just in case you missed last night’s post, you can find about 8,000 (and growing) kaomoji facemarks at evoticon. Other technical terms included in this post are emoji, simple icons, and decomail, HTML templated mail, including DIY text animation.
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It will soon be Valentine’s Day, so to get into the mood I present a short ranking survey from goo Ranking on failures commited on Valentine’s Day.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 22nd of December 2008 1,039 members of the goo Research monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The reported sex split was exactly 50.00% male and 50.00% female, a figure that one will instantly see is wrong, so for the sake of argument I’ll round it up to 520 females and down to 519 males. 7.6% of the sample were in their teens, 15.6% in their twenties, 28.0% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 10.3% 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. Note also this question was for women only, as the day is only for women to give stuff to men.
　
Note that there are two main types of chocolates to be passed – true love chocolates and obligatory chocolates. The latter mostly goes to workmates. More details can be found in a recently-translated serious survey from Macromill into Valentine’s day.
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I’ve looked a number of times at YouTube and Nico Nico Douga, but this survey from MyVoice is a little different, looking at movie delivery (and streaming) services that focus more on commercial content.

Demographics

Over the first five days of January 2009 14,034 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teens, 14% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually used a commercial movie streaming or delivery service myself, and I can’t really see myself paying for it. I get Star Channel on cable, so I suppose if they offered a similar service for download direct to my DVD recorder, I perhaps could pay a monthly fee. AcTVila offers that sort of service through one’s television and Blu-ray recorder, but as can be seen here the take-up is quite low, but then again it is a new service.

Note that although I refer to movies in the translation below, the services also cover re-runs of television shows, etc.
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It’s coming up to that time of the year in Japan where the women may express their love and have to express their gratitute, so Macromill Inc looked at women and Valentine’s Day.

Demographics

Over the 21st and 22nd of January 2009 515 female members of the Macromill monitor group aged between twenty and thirty-nine completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54 were aged between 20 and 24, 155 between 25 and 29, 174 between 30 and 34, and 132 between 35 and 39.

In Japan there are two different types of chocolate that women must buy for Valentine’s Day. The first kind is “true” (本命, honmei) chocolates, the other “obligatory” (義理, giri); the first goes to your true love (or object of infatuation, etc), the second male colleagues at work. As you may guess, the amount of effort and expense gone to for each type varies greatly!

Note that “traditionally” it is the women who give men presents on Valentine’s Day, and they hope for something in return on White Day, the 14th of March. However, from this year some of the chocolate makers have been promoting 逆チョコ, gyaku choko, reverse chocolates, which come in a mirror imaged box.

Two years ago I translated a similar Macromill Valentine survey that you may want to cross-reference.
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As I’ve just recently had a request from work to complete some online training, this recent survey from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into e-learning is quite timely for me.

Demographics

Over the 7th and 8th of January 2009 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, 20.0% 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.

The training I’ve been asked to complete is some stuff on copyright and intellectual property, all in Japanese of course, in some sort of Flash-based presentation that I’ve not tried yet. I once did a similar course with quite nice software that came with full text of all the script, so I could easily cut-and-paste words I didn’t understand into a dictionary. However, the course was ridiculously easy; it just seemed like a way to force you to sit through 10 or 15 hours of lectures, with the implication, of course, that you do it all on your own time, not at work.
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