世論 What Japan Thinks

This survey from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com looking into issues surrounding Google Maps Street View.

Demographics

On the 20th of August 2008 332 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor panel employed in either the public or private sectors completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 83.7% of the sample were male, 6.3% in their twenties, 35.8% in their thirties, 45.2% in their forties, and 12.7% in their fifties.

The Google camera car didn’t make a trip up my street, despite being right beside a railway station on the most overcrowded (or so I heard, I should search for figures!) line in the Kansai area. When I used my old computer with Street View it was horribly slow, although I did manage to find my previous flat. I had a look around the area but didn’t find anyone I knew, however.
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With other surveys showing that car manufacturers are among the most green companies, let’s look at one effort they make to show their green credentials, hybrid cars, in a survey conducted by MyVoice.

Demographics

Over the first five days of August 2008 14,782 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed an internet-based private questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% were in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 18% in their fifties.

The Prius is a lovely car which I always try to rent when I need a car in Japan. I always use Toyota Rent-A-Car. If you pay using a (Japanese only?) credit card you get a 5% discount. The cars are fully-equipped with a CD player, good satellite navigation system (Japanese only!) and ETC automatic toll payment machine, if you have a card for that. I’m picking up one the weekend after next, and it works out at about 8,000 yen per day.

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It’s now 19 months since Windows Vista appeared on the Japanese market (last January), so this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Inc into computer operating systems looked at how it was penetrating the market.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 25th of August 2008 300 home computer-owning members of Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sexes were split 50:50, 20.0% of the sample 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 recently upgraded to Vista as it came with my new machine. I’d put myself in the moderately satisfied category, but I’m still trying to get it set up just as I desire, and the photo management software and nengajo (New Year postcard) management software that I specially bought as a set had a “Windows Vista compatible” sticket, but I find that really means “not incompatible with Vista” as it requires full permissions in order to run.
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Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea was the sweetest film I’ve seen since My Neighbour Totoro, and over 8 million Japanese seem to agree with that sentiment. The official Ponyo site itself has racked up just under a million visitors, 995,000 to be precise, (low in my view) from home computers in July, the highest ever figures for the film maker Ghibli’s properties, with the main ages of the visitors being 34% in their thirties and 29% in their forties. By sex, 57% were female. Previous records were 701,000 in November of 2004 for Howl’s Moving Castle, and 444,000 in July of 2006 for Tales of Earthsea.

For all of the Ghibili sites visitors jumped from 114,000 in June to 1,123,000 in July.

For box office sales, number one for the first half of the year was 相棒, aibou, with 311,000 predominantly male viewers in May alone, with over half of the total being over forty years old. In July, the top movie was Hana Yori Dango (Boys before Flowers) with 576,000 ticket sales, 85% of them to females, and 38% of the viewers 19 years old or younger.

Story from the Japanese original on IT Media.

There was a short report on IT Media about a new female-oriented site that is threatening to break into the big time. This under-the-radar idiom is お化けサイト, obake saito, or ghost/monster site. At least I hope that’s what the meaning is!

The site is entitled 発言小町, hatsugen komachi, or in English Talk Town might be a reasonable translation, a sub-site on the Yomiuri Shimbun’s site. Although the monthly unique visitors from home computers are a factor of ten to twenty behind the big boys, the average time spent per unique visitor is far ahead of the competition, as this chart shows.

One important issue when comparing sites is that the user profile is older and female-biased, as the following tables show.

Looking at other articles, two of the main selling points of the site to the female population are that all posts are moderated before posting and that the a lot of the highlighted content on the front page reads like the problem page of a woman’s magazine.

Story from the Japanese original on IT Media.

We’re now two months into the iPhone era in Japan, so this 39th regular mobile upgrade needs survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com took a closer look at some of the issues surrounding this device.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 21st of August 2008 1,000 mobile phone-using members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.2% of the sample were female, 2.0% were in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 40.8% in their thirties, 24.6% in their forties, and 14.3% aged fifty or older.

Note that for Q1 and Q2, for people with multiple providers or multiple phones, they answered for their main one only.

Apple on 0.3% for this survey is a difficult number to interpret. If you take the aproximate figure of 100 million mobile phones in Japan, this represents about 300,000 users, but figures suggest there has been about 100,000 iPhones sold in Japan. The age group of respondents is biased toward the iPhone demographic, and almost all of them own home computers, so it would suggest a bias, but how much is difficult to predict.

Q4 is a difficult one to interpret. Just over half of those surveyed do not welcome some of the phones; in English being not welcome has negative connotations, but it may be more correct to say that people are just not bothered.
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If you’ve recently fallen out of love, my sympathies and please stop reading now! Otherwise, enjoy with me today’s Silly Sunday with goo Ranking where we look at what people do when their hearts get broken, for both boys and men and girls and women, as the sample was restricted to the under thirties.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 15th of July 2008 1,064 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.9% of the sample were female, 10.3% in their teens and 89.7% in their twenties. 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 not sure if the “do nothing” option means to fall into a catatonic state or to just shrug your shoulders and get on with life, although I would like to believe that it is the first of the two!

Photo from нσвσ on flickr. Just in case you can’t read, the kanji is “heart”.
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My favourite hobby – well, it’s not really a hobby, just an excuse to get some fresh air – is doing the garden, although it mostly consists of cutting the grass, watering the plants, and following directions on where to place everything! This survey from MyVoice looked at how the Japanese approached gardening.

Demographics

Over the first five days of August 2008 14,858 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teens, 16% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 18% in their fifties.

I wonder if the keenness to grow vegetables is in any way connected with the recent rises in prices of many goods? From our garden we get mint and chives, mainly. We got a Brussels sprout plant but it’s still to sprout. Two years ago we planted oba/shiso and got a huge crop; with 10 leaves costing 80 to 100 yen per pack, and us going through up to 50 per week, 200 yen for a seedling from the garden centre is a wonderful bargain. We’ve got a lot of roses, but although they are lovely in the spring, they really suffer in the summer and we’re just beginning to get some new flowers through, but they’re barely a quarter of the size! Oh, and three weeks ago I had great fun relieving stress by hacking a path through two overgrown bushes.
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With the Olympics over for another four years and with Japan getting a reasonable haul of medals, Macromill performed a survey into post-Olympic views.

Demographics

Over the 25th and 26th of August 2008 516 members of the Macromill Monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female in each age group; 24.8% were in their twenties, 25.2% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, and 24.8% in their fifties.

I didn’t watch much of the Olympics, but for me the most moving moments were Usian Bolt winning his two individual medals; celebrating the 100 metres win 10 metres before the finish line, then pulling out all the stops on the 200 metres to win by the proverbial mile.

Also, just today I read that Kosuke Kitajima, the double-double gold medal swimmer, was voted best beerist for knocking back a pint or two in celebration!
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Surprisingly high levels of data security were uncovered in this recent survey from Marsh Inc and reported by japan.internet.com into computer backups.

Demographics

Over the 18th and 19th of August 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were male, 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.

I haven’t backed-up for ages and ages, although the wife pesters me to do it weekly or so. Hopefully now that we have our new PC with a DVD-R I can set up a regular schedule. Can anyone recommend good software for that? Talking of backups, I don’t do it for the blog either…

I’m surprised, however, at the numbers who do back up, and perhaps in the full survey we would find answers to questions like why did they start backing up, have they ever had to restore, and did the backups restore correctly.
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