世論 What Japan Thinks

After mentioning in a survey earlier this week about how smoking was my second-favourite survey topic, along comes this survey from DMSDRIVE Research Inc on my favourite topic in Japan, tooth care, in particular electric toothbrushes. As a bonus, this survey also touches on the use of this equipment by smokers.

Demographics

Between the 20th and 27th of August 2008 9,029 memebers of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. 51.6% of the sample were female, 1.2% in their teens, 13.4% in their twenties, 33.8% in their thirties, 29.9% in their forties, 14.9% in their fifties, and 6.8% aged sixty or older. As a bonus statistic, 27.2% were current smokers, 19.3% ex-smokers, and 53.5% had never smoked.

Note that Sunstar make cheap-and-cheerful battery-operated toothbrushes that they sell alongside their manual counterparts in almost all pharmacies and supermarkets, where as all the other manufacturers make proper brushes.

I have a Braun Oral-B that I bought with points from a credit card, but I only use it at the weekends as cleaning and drying after every use during the week is too much bother!
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Even on my quite old analogue tube television, digital looks very, very nice, and this is the main reason for nine in ten being completely satisfied with terrestrial digital television broadcasting in Japan, according to this survey on the topic, goo Research’s third regular look at digital TV, and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 31st of October and the 4th of November 2008 1,044 members of the goo Research online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, and 27.7% aged fifty or older.

I remember when I bought my television they were showing full digital-ready televisions alongside (with a decent markup at that time) at Yodobashi Camera and the picture quality between the two was incomparable. However, I noticed that the sample DVD they were playing on the set we eventually bought was a DVD encoded at a quite low bit rate, and I wouldn’t have put it past them to have been deliberately tampering with the signal to add a little noise.

Conversely, I’ve noticed on large-screen full digital LCDs and plasmas any flaws in the source material are crystal clear and… I feel I sound like an old fogey declaring that vinyl beats CD!

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I was prompted to translate this survey by Mari’s recent mention of such cars. Ita-sha, literally painful cars (to look at, or from the point of view of the car?), painted up with anime characters of the so-called moe kind, which usually means infeasibly large-breasted schoolgirls. This recent survey published by iShare on the topic of car customisation found almost one in three willing, to use the vernacular, to rice up their cars.

Demographics

Between the 25th and 27th of October 2008 424 members of the free email forwarding service CLUB BBQ completed a private online questionnaire. 53.8% of the sample were male, 15.3% in their twenties, 49.3% in their thirties, 26.7% in their forties, and 8.7% in their teens or fifty or older. The sample is a bit small to draw conclusions from, but the topic is quite fun so it would be a shame not to translate this one.

I’ve never seen a manga-adorned car myself, although there is no shortage of be-spoilered and be-skirted mini-vans farting around town with their after-market exhausts which certainly qualify as ita-sha in terms of my own eyes and ears.
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I’m not really up on the issues myself regarding national testing, but I am against the whole culture of testing in Japan. I am all for publishing the results of regular examinations, but not tests for the sake of tests. However, I would appear to be very much in the minority according to the results of this survey into national educational level testing, conducted by goo Research in conjunction with the Mainichi Shimbun.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 19th of October 2008 1,075 mmbers of the goo Research monitor group aged twenty or older completed a private online questionnaire. No further demographics information was provided.

I’m a bit confused in Q1 why there is an answer “both the school and local authority level”, as it is a trivial task to take the school results and sum them up by area. Also, Q1SQ1 and Q1SQ2 should really be multiple choice questions and there are no “don’t knows”, so I suspect there has been some post-processing of the results for presentation.
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Second only to teeth, smoking is one of my favourite subjects to cover on this blog, so I hope you too enjoy this recent survey from MyVoice on this very subject.

Demographics

Over the first five days of October 2008 14,473 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 14% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older. Note that since the legal smoking age is 20 years old in Japan, no teenagers took part in this survey.

Note that taspo is an identity card that is needed in order to operate most cigarette machines to serve as proof that the person is holding a card issued to someone over 20.
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Here’s a fun survey from goo Ranking that I’d love to hear everyone else’s input on! The looked at what people secretly think they are number one for amongst their friends. Sadly there wasn’t a male/female split!

Demographics

Between the 24th and 26th of September 2008 1,044 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.6% of the sample were male, 5.8% in their teens, 12.7% in their twenties, 32.3% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, 12.3% in their fifties, and 9.3% 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.

Apart from obviously being the most handsome amongst my fellow gaijin bloggers, I secretly believe that I put the most effort per post into my blogs compared to you lot of slackers who just slap up a few videos from YouTube mixed in with a bit of Engrish and… Oops, I just remembered that the survey isn’t “Why are your friends all useless?”

What’s your secret boast? Don’t worry, I won’t tell.

(I also didn’t repeat my previous mistake when translating number 3 here)
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I’ve covered similar surveys to this one in the past, which found an unbelievably high three in ten claimed to currently own or have owned a domain (I’ve just now double-checked the source, and my translation is accurate), but this time goo Research found a much more acceptable figure in this survey on one’s own home page, as reported by japan.internet.com.

Research results

Over the 22nd and 23rd of October 2008 1,090 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 16.7% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.0% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 16.0% in their fifties, and 12.0% in their sixties.

Even though .jp is the most popular domain name below, according to GoDaddy it costs $99 per year to register one, but for some reason whatjapanthinks.jp seems to be not for sale, although I cannot find any information why, as whois lookups are failing!

As I said on the previous survey, I think there is a degree of confusion in thinking that http://whatjapanthinks.blogspot.com/ is actually a top-level domain.
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This is quite a surprising set of results for me, but perhaps one factor is a relative reluctance to using credit cards online, although I would have thought banks would be more of a worry? Have a look at these results published on japan.internet.com from a survey conducted by Marsh Inc into online banking.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 28th of October 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Exactly 50.0% of the sample were male, 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.

I’ve always meant to look into online banking – actually, all my UK money is in a bank that is online (talking of HSBC, they finally opened branches in Japan, but the one in Kobe, at least, is after the top end, people with 10 million yen or more to invest – in Japan, but never quite got round to it. I once checked my SMBC balance online, but that’s the extent of it!
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A little bit of politics for you today, as iShare decided to look at awareness of the American presidential election, in particular its effect on Japan.

Demographics

Over the 5th and 6th of November 2008 501 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.9% of the sample were male, 12.6% in their twenties, 48.3% in their thirties, 28.5% in their forties, and 10.6% in their teens or fifty or older. The sample seems to be drawn from a more technology-aware crowd than the average internet user, thus the geeks in the headline.

Just in case you are wondering who (or what) the Nocchi in the headline is, he is Nozomu Sato, a Japanese comedian who looks like Mr Obama, and in fact met him for a brief instant. I predict great things for Nocchi, as if I’ve learnt one thing about the entertainment industry in Japan, one sure way to get ahead is to be a one-trick pony, then milk it for all you’re worth!
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Having just got my gold status with Flying Blue and enough points banked for business class to Europe and back – that’s a really poor introduction and sounds just like the boasting that it is! Anyway, today’s survey is from MyVoice, looking at usage of airline mileage services.

Demographics

Over the first five days of October 2008 14,650 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 think KLM are a very good airline, but their Flying Blue partner Air France were a bit iffy the one time I flew cattle class with them, but the main drawback with them is that their trans-Pacific partner is NorthWest. They charge $5 for a drink in economy, yet when I got to my destination in Boston last month I could get a pint of fresh draft at a rather posh hotel for just $4.50. They did upgrade me to business class on the way back, however, which was nice.

I’ve twice used saved ANA points; the first was on magnet pillows – the wife bought them! Next was on a pair of his and her watches that have performed rather well, considering.
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