世論 What Japan Thinks

I’ve once or twice seen dodgy street stalls in Den-Den Town (Osaka’s Akihabara) selling copies of popular business software titles, so to see how the Japanese might purchase such goods of dubious provenance this survey from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com on piracy reveals some answers.

Demographics

On the 22nd of June 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Research monitor group employed in private industry successfully completed a private intret-based questionnaire. 77.6% of the sample were male, 9.1% were in their twenties, 40.6% in their thirties, 41.2% in their forties, and 9.1% in their fifties.

There’s actually a couple of problems with this survey – first Q1 asks if one has ever bought pirate media; how many were reporting purchases before they had broadband? I know when I had an Atari ST and a 1200/75 modem, I was regular visitor to The Barras. Second, by choosing a sample of people with internet access, they often have the ability to download stuff for free (or even paying, as the survey focussed on physical product) rather than paying for a tangible fake. And of course, there’s a certain percentage who would not admit their use of such contents.

Oh, and in Q1SQ1, pirate vinyl? Never heard of such a thing, although I wonder if that includes laser disk?
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I’ve previously translated surveys looking at Japanese text emoticons (kaomoji) and at graphical icons (emoji) but now let’s look at a recent survey from BlogCh on emoji and kaomoji.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 13th of June 2008 433 members of the BlogCh monitor panel who owned mobile phones. 53.1% of the sample were male, 15.5% in their twenties, 49.9% in their thirties, 27.0% in their forties, and 7.6% of other ages.

I use emoji almost exclusively, with one of the main reasons being that I cannot remember the meaning of most of the kaomoji! I also occasionally download, or more often save icons from other people’s mobile phone email.
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First, a quick apology for no post yesterday, but I was in transit and away from a free internet connection, and on top of that the site seemed to have crashed… Hopefully I can post to my usual schedule for the rest of the week.

Since I didn’t have a decent internet connection, this is a survey from a couple of weeks ago conducted by the Nippon Research Council into olympic sponsorship and olympic viewing intentions.

Demographics

Between the 30th of May and the 4th of June 2008 1,200 members of the NRC monitor panel resident in the Tokyo city area (Tokyo city, Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa) and the Keihanshin area of Kansai (Kyoto city, Osaka city and Hyogo) completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Sex and age breakdown was not noted.

Note that Panasonic and National are both brands of Matsushita Electric Industrial, but at the AGM of shareholders on Friday the 20th of June 2008 the board got a motion officially approved to change the company name to Panasonic and to kill off the National brand (used mostly for domestic appliances and other white goods), unifying everything worldwide under the Panasonic banner.

It’s all a bit depressing that the two best-known sponsors are suppliers of highly-sugared empty calories and fat-laden burgers, hardly the image of the ultimate in human physical achievement.
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Any foreigner who has lived in Japan, or even just visited for a few days, cannot fail to have heard “You’re good with chopsticks” from their hosts. This survey from goo Ranking into what foreigner in Japan activity surprises the Japanese (in a good way) looked at what other things people were impressed with. Chopsticks did figure in the rankings!

Demographics

Between the 21st and 23th of May 2008 1,072 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Exactly 50% of the sample were male, 5.7% in their teens, 12.9% in their twenties, 31.8% in their thirties, 27.5% in their forties, 11.3% in their fifties, and 10.8% 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.

I’d love to see number eight myself, so if any of my readers have suitable photos, please post them and I’ll feature them on the site!

Number eleven is a Japanese habit of sticking a hand out in front to break through a crowd, often seen as someone tries to pass down a train for instance. However, some foreigners have found that a bicycle bell works just as well.

I don’t understand number sixteen! Is this a popular image from manga comics?
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I’ve got a couple of Nintendo DS learning games, but I don’t have a DS to play them on, but that’s another story. Today’s story is a survey from goo Research, in conjuction with the Research Institute for Digital Media and Content at Keio University into game machine and computer-based self-study.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 25th of February 2008 (although the results were only posted on the 17th of June) 1,063 members of the goo Research consumer monitor group in employement completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The male:female split was 50:50, with the extra odd person being male. The age range is not noted, however. By employment status, 2.9% were senior management, 8.8% middle management, 10.2% lower management, 27.2% ordinary employees, 8.0% contract or dispatch employees, 13.7% part-time or temporary, 26.0% students, and 3.2% others.

At work we have various e-learning courses available that vary from free to quite expensive, with the company usually paying half of the fees, as long as you sit the exams at the end or complete most of the coursework, etc. I’m not sure how many people actually use the facilities though!

Here the term e-learning means online training on either the internet or intranet.
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Although metabo is probably the biggest personal health topic in Japan, this recent survey from MyVoice into health awareness didn’t really touch on it, although it covered other interesting areas.

Demographics

Over the first five days of May 2008 14,369 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, 37% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 17% in their fifties.

With Q7 asking about mobile phone services, there’s a couple of other mobile services I’ve heard about. First is a Singapore trial where bathroom scales communicate with a mobile phone via BlueTooth, which then communicates with a central server to record daily weight changes, etc. Second is an au service in Japan, where by using GPS functionality you can record your own movements and work out speed of running or walking, calories used, etc, etc.
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With the government pushing rice for breakfast using an “image character” that looks like a mutated Contac character filled with polystyrene balls, and with the price of bread rising rapidly, perhaps next time that MyVoice performs a survey into breakfast we will see more people switching to rice.

Demographics

Over the first five days of May 2008 14,519 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were feamle, 2% in their teens, 14% in their twenties, 38% in their thirtiesm 29% in their forties, and 17% in their fifties.

Weekday breakfast for me is toast and some museli, most often, washed down with a little water in under fifteen minutes on the whole. Weekends are more interesting as I have time to eat more slowly, and have salad, instant soup or freeze-dried miso, and an egg. Having just typed that, I realise this survey would have been more interesting if they’d split weekdays and weekends into separate questions.
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Perhaps I should temporarily rename the blog to “携帯 What Japan Thinks of the iPhone” since I’m joining in on the hype at every opportunity! This time it is JR Tokai Express Research Inc, as reported by japan.internet.com, carring out a survey into the iPhone.

Demographics

On the 13th of June 2008 330 mobile phone-using members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel employed in private industry completed a members-only internet-based questionnaire. 71.2% of the sample were male, 11.8% in their twenties, 44.5% in their thirties, 32.4% in their forties, 9.1% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.

In Q2, it is curious that 10 people selected SMS as a feature they wanted to use. The users of SMS are few indeed, I think (I can’t remember the last time mentioned it on this blog), as a full email service (including HTML these days) is standard on phones, and there’s no such thing as free SMS in most plans. Perhaps it’s just that a few people are curious to see what exactly the fuss is about?

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With the recet spate of natural disasters in Burma, China and now Japan itself, this may be a good time to look at a recent survey published on japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into internet donations.

Demographics

On the 5th of June 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor pool employed in private industry completed a members-only internet-based questionnaire. 77.0% of the sample were male, 9.4% in their twenties, 33.0% in their thirties, 40.6% in their forties, 15.8% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their sixties.

It’s a pretty low number of donaters and sum they are donating, and it sounds mostly like people getting rid of saved-up points that they have no intention of ever cashing in.
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Although a survey last year showed that around 40% fancied an iPhone, now we have the first survey regarding the concrete release date to see if people are prepared to put their money where their mouths are. This survey was conducted by iShare and BlogCh and the topic was actually mobile phone battery changing, but since the iPhone doesn’t have a user-changeable battery pack, they shoehorned an iPhone question in.

Demographics

Over the 5th and 6th of June 2008 402 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.5% of the sample was male, 12.2% in their twenties, 43.5% in their thirties, 34.8% in their forties, and 9.5% in their teens or over fifty.

If you’ve read my recent estimate of monthly fees for a SoftBank iPhone you may be put off buying it, I suspect. I’ve had some criticism of my figures, but I wanted to choose 300 free minutes as a realistic figure, as that is just 10 minutes a day with free calls only to other SoftBank owners, and the X Series unlimited packet service at 9,800 yen a month is their Smartphone tariff, and although there is a sliding scale of charges, the upper limit of 52,500 packets per month is just 6.7 megabytes of data, or about 224 kilobytes per day, or just one page of many popular web sites, thus surely everyone will use their full allowance.
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