世論 What Japan Thinks

goo Ranking looked recently at from what occupation would one like to have a gocon with, for both women choosing men and men choosing women. A gocon is a dating party, usually consisting of three of four guys and three of four women, with each group usually being work colleagues.

Demographics

Between the 21th and 24th of October 2008 1,056 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were female, 5.0% in their teens, 13.2% in their twenties, 28.4% in their thirties, 31.5% in their forties, 13.1% in their fifties, and 8.8% 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.
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goo Ranking has done a whole series of these questions for each prefecture in Japan, but since this one is about my home prefecture, I thought I’d translate this survey on what comes to mind regarding Hyogo Prefecture.

Demographics

Between the 21th and 24th of October 2008 1,056 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were female, 5.0% in their teens, 13.2% in their twenties, 28.4% in their thirties, 31.5% in their forties, 13.1% in their fifties, and 8.8% 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.

All pictures are from flickr – click the credit column to access the original.
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A subject that pops up every so often is the matter of children and cellphone usage, this time conducted by MyVoice.

Demographics

Over the first five days of November 2008 14,671 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 34% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 19% aged fifty or older.

Pictured here is Willcom’s child cellphone from Bandai, the papipo!, with a Tamagochi theme to it. Perhaps it’s just me, but it does look awfully like a toilet seat when folded closed…

In Q3 it’s interesting that in child cellphones, docomo loses out to both au and SoftBank compared to the percentages for adult phone ownership.
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No, not a free offer from me, but some research into 年賀状, nengajou, New Year Postcards conducted by iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com looking in particular at both free advertisement-plastered pre-franked postcards and the SNS mixi’s pay service for sending postcards to virtual friends whilst retaining privacy, a process which I wouldn’t be surprised if they have applied for a patent for.

Demographics

On the 25th of November 2008 300 people from the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were female, 14.3% in their twenties, 37.3% in their thirties, 31.7% in their forties, 10.3% in their fifties, and 6.3% in their sixties.

Looking at the web site giving the cards away (too late, the closing date is past!) it’s actually rather a good idea. The cards have the adverts inside the postcard and can be peeled open, otherwise you get an almost completely blank card for you do draw or print on as desired.

I’ve already ordered and received my Year of the Cow cards; two styles, one with Hello Kitty in a field of cows, the other is just a generic cute cartoon cow design. Both were designed and ordered over the internet, but we’ll be printing out the addresses at home.
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Japan is well-known the world over for being a nation of newspaper readers, so on the surface the headline figure from this survey by DIMSDRIVE Research into newspaper purchase is not too big a surprise. A quick language note – in Japan 新聞, shimbun, is the Japanese for newspaper, which you could probably work out anyway from Q3!

Demographics

Between the 17th of September and the 2nd of October 2008 10,231 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitors completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were female, 1.2% in their teens, 13.4% in their twenties, 34.2% in their thirties, 30.2% in their forties, 14.8% in their fifties, and 6.2% aged sixty or older. By employement status, the three largest percentages were 40.4% full-time company employees, 20.7% homemakers, and 12.4% part-time or casual labour. By household income, 6.6% earned under 2 million yen per year, 19.8% under 4 million yen, 24.4% under 6 million yen, 15.3% under 8 million yen, 9.6% under 10 million yen, and 10.3% over 10 million yen. 14.0% were not saying or didn’t know.

One way that Japanese newspapers keep their print subscriptions up is to limit the amount they publish on their web sites. Most keep stories down to two or three paragraphs, often publishing just newswire articles, and expire them after just a few days.

If anything, the numbers reported here may be lower than actuality, as the third-biggest daily newspaper in Japan, the Seikyo Shimbun, is missing from the list. Whether this and other organisation’s dailies were explicitly excluded is not stated, as for instance the Shimbun Akahata (Red Flag – guess whose that is!) also shifts almost 1.7 million copies per day.

The photo is of Danny Choo being featured in a Japanese newspaper, from his flickr collection. I and many others, I think, are secdretly jealous that he gets such coverage and makes so much dosh just for doing the stuff he loves!
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Well, they are actually called 忘年会, bounenkai, forget the year parties, over here but they serve a similar purpose to said Xmas event. To find out what you shouldn’t do there, goo Ranking had a look at the NG activities at a bounenkai. NG is a commonly-used abbreviation in Japan too, for No Good.

Demographics

Between the 21th and 24th of October 2008 1,056 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were female, 5.0% in their teens, 13.2% in their twenties, 28.4% in their thirties, 31.5% in their forties, 13.1% in their fifties, and 8.8% 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.

Since this is a silly survey, I’ll be a bit freer with the translation today! I also couldn’t be bothered waiting until Sunday to present this.

I hope I can rely on Roaf at Gaijin Tonic to break most of these rules at this year’s bounenkai!

Which reminds me, you can buy drunken salarymen mobile phone charms from Strapya.
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As a professional blogger (perhaps) my requirements for a blogging service are very different from the average person, so I do find it a little hard to relate to this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Inc into blogging.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 21st of November 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor panel completed an internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 by sex, and 20.0% were 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.

In Q1 I think the amount of people reading commercial blogs is rather low, but I suspect it might be that because people are not seeing the URL as megacorp.com/blog, they assume that places are just hobby blogs, not commercial enterprises.

Most of the Japanese blogs, particularly the personal blogs, make Facebook look tasteful.
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Own brands, or house brands as I think they are known as in the USA, or private brands as they are known in Japan, are the supermarket’s own label items that are sold cheaper than the household brand names. To see what Japan thinks of them, MyVoice performed a survey into own brand products.

Demographics

Over the first five days on November 2008 15,510 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 36% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older.

I try to keep away from own brands in Japan, as I’ve not had very good experiences with them, on the whole. Daiei do fake Kit-Kats, for instance. Their plain ones just don’t have the right chocolate or the crispiness in the wafer, and their flavoured ones are downright nasty!

I think I remember back in the UK there was a web site that listed which own brands were repackaged famous brands; I wonder if such a service exists over here?
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This recent survey from iShare looked at cinemas, touching on where I went for my first date with my wife, the cinema, which is actually a really poor place to choose, but that’s another matter altogether!

Demographics

Between the 12th and 14th of November 2008 just 404 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.7% of the sample were male, 13.6% in their twenties, 47.8% in their thirties, 27.7% in their forties, and 10.9% in their teens or aged fifty or older.

Note that for Q1 there are two reasons why women go to the movies more; first there are more women with the free time to go, and second most cinemas have a “Ladies’ Day” once per week where they charge 1,000 yen per ticket for the ladies. Us men only have the first of the month to get our cheap tickets, although I have seen one cinema, Movix Rokko, that also has a Men’s Day.

Two days I also signed up for a Toho Cinema Mastercard that promises to give one free movie for every six, including movies watched using advance discount tickets.
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Here’s a quick second dose of goo Ranking for today, this time they asked women what words of faint praise are they not sure if they should be happy to hear.

Demographics

Between the 21th and 24th of October 2008 1,056 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were female, 5.0% in their teens, 13.2% in their twenties, 28.4% in their thirties, 31.5% in their forties, 13.1% in their fifties, and 8.8% 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. Since this was a female-only survey, only the 554 women answered.

Pictured above is the top answer, a Heian beauty (well, I think she’s from the Heian period!), to let you decide whether it is a compliment or not.

Photo from whatsound on flickr
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