世論 What Japan Thinks

Here’s a subject that I haven’t seen a survey on for a while; goo Research used to do a regular monthly survey up until last year when they dropped it and replaced it with a Wikipedia one. The topic, as reported on by japan.internet.com, was RSS readers.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 11th of March 2008 1,100 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 12.0% in their teens, 22.7% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 27.6% aged fifty or older.

Pictured above is my statistics from my RSS feed at FeedBurner for Thursday the 15th of May 2008, my highest ever susbscriber count of 1,991; to each of you I say thank you very much!

I couldn’t blog without RSS – I use Google Reader, and for example to find news for my Trusted Computing blog I have subscribed to half a dozen Google blog and news searches, so whenever a new story appears I get an automatic reminder. On the other hand, for this site half my sources do not offer feeds, which is a bit of a pain.
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With the new taspo (short for tobacco passport) system gradually being introduced across Japan, this recent survey from DIMSDRIVE Research Inc into taspo sheds some light on what may be in store.

Demographics

Between the 2nd and 10th of April 2008 6,727 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 61.1% of the sample was female, 1.2% in their teens, 17.2% in their twenties, 35.9% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 13.2% in their fifties, and 5.2% aged sixty or older. 59 people, or 0.9%, lived in the two trial prefectures where the taspo system has gone live, namely Miyazaki and Kagoshima.

The taspo card has two functions; one is as a proof of age card, the other is electronic cash. However, the electronic cash system is completely incompatible with all other systems, and none of the questions in this survey asked about this feature.

In Q6 you can see most people think there will be little or no effect on under-age smoking due to the introduction of the card. There’s a million and one other cheaper ways that smoking could be reduced in Japan, with forcing Japan Tobacco out of self-denial being high up on the list. As a quick translation, they say (a) that smoking is just one factor combined with environment, stress, eating habits, genetics, exercise, etc and (b) cancer only develops in mice when you attach the equivalent of thousands or tens of thousands of ciggies-worth of tar to their skin. Go to any of the privately-owned brewers’ web sites and there’s a message on the front page about under-age drinking and not drinking when pregnant or nursing. On the other hand, see if you can find the health (dis)information on JT’s Smokers Style site, without cheating and using the site map link.
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I may be trying to outdo Tokyo Times for alliterative headlines, but I’ll not be challenging his collection of themed bras and panties. (Each word is a different link!) This is instead a photograph-free fact-filled serious survey into pantie purchasing (OK, you get the idea, back to normal!) conducted by iShare and reported through BlogCh.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 9th of May 2008 723 members of the iShare online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.1% of the sample was male, 20.5% were in their twenties, 53.4% in their thirties, and 26.1% in their forties.

The lucky underwear in Q3, or as it’s known in Japanese, 勝負下着, shoubu shitagi, refers to underwear worn on the whole, I think, when going on dates (or just going out) in the hope of getting lucky.

I’m not really sure about the 1.0% of guys wearing T-backs in Q4, and I wonder if going commando is a significant percentage of the others in Q4 and Q5.

Most of mine are Hello Kitty and other cute character boxers, bought by the wife, if you must know!
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Thanks to legislation in the last couple of years, the rates of interest for personal unsecured loans have dropped from around 27% to a much lower but still outrageously expensive 10% to 19%. To see how these and other changes have affected consumer opinions, MyVoice conducted a survey into personal loans, their fifth annual survey, although I haven’t translated any of the previous ones.

Demographics

Over the first five days of April 2008 14,989 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 1% in their teens, 14% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 17% aged fifty or older.

Here, personal loan is defined as covering consumer credit, “cashing” or cash advances from credit companies (I think that includes cash withdrawls from a credit card) that are paid back in installments, and loans from joint ventures between consumer credit companies and banks. Bank-only loans are not covered.

I personally view these loan companies as gateway drugs to the loansharks; even with the legislation to reduce the interest rates and to require a wealth warning about maintaining a proper balance between income and outgoings the companies are still notorious for high-pressure sales and debt collection tactics, taking advantage of the average consumer’s reluctance to approach a third party for help with debt issues. Persistant rumours of association with the Yakuza hang around many companies despite official statements to the contrary.

For their part, Aiful were responsible for inflicting chihuahuas on too many people with even less money than sense.
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This recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc looks at the giant of the Japanese Social Networking Service market, mixi.

Demographics

On the 30th of April 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group employed in the private sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 70.6% of the sample was male, 13.0% in their twenties, 43.3% in their thirties, 33.0% in their forties, 8.8% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties. Why exactly they limited the sample to only the private sector is a bit of a mystery to me, however.

Before you ask, sorry, I don’t have any invites to mixi to give to anyone. To sign up you need a Japanese mobile phone email address, but I don’t know of anyone offering a proxy service for sign-ups, whether for free or for a small fee. Indeed, there might be a minor business opportunity there, selling sign-ups. If anyone does know of such a service, or is offering to do sign-ups for free, etc, please drop me a line and I’ll link to you.
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As the proud owner of a spam-free cell phone, this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into this topic of cell phone spam was rather interesting to see.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 4th of May 2008 312 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group who were mobile phone email users completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.3% of the sample was female, 2.4% in their teens, 17.6% in their twenties, 37.6% in their thirties, 26.4% in their forties, 9.4% in their fifties, and 4.8% aged sixty or older. Looking at when a similar spam survey was conducted in February 2007, and following the usual pattern of JR Tokai Express Researh, the original sample was actually 330 or 331 people, so just over 5% did not have mobile phones.

One could interpret the results from Q1 to mean that once you’re on a spammer’s list you’re going to get hit badly, as dodgy Japanese companies (or even reputable ones like Rakuten) are not backward about flooding your mailbox or selling on your address. Of course, my PC mailbox for the blog is anything but spam-free, although my private address gets just one per day or so, thanks to POBox.com’s spam filtering.
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As well as being suitably silly for your Sunday entertainment, this recent survey from goo Ranking into Japan’s cutest corporate mascot is also an excuse to introduce a new blog, Japanese mascots, which does just what it says on the tin.

Demographics

Over the 21st and 22nd of March 2008 1,036 people from the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.7% were male, 7.0% in their teens, 14.7% in their twenties, 30.1% in their thirties, 27.0% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 10.2% aged sixty or over. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

My favourite character is Liyon-chan, but he doesn’t make the list as he’s a Kansai-only character, I think, or perhaps he was wrongly-counted as the Lion Lion-chan? From the list, it would have to be Pinky then Koala no March kun.

Note that characters from companies like Sanrio, Disney, and San-X who are sold as characters in their own right were excluded from this survey.

Oh, and click the character photos to see a video of the animal in action.
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The health topic of the last couple of years in Japan has most certainly been Metabolic Syndrome, having certain characteristics associated with being fat that make you more prone to lifestyle diseases like heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Many countries have slightly different diagnostic measures; for Japan it is a waist greater than 85 cm for men, 90 cm for women; triglycerids greater than 150 mg/dL and/or HDL cholesterol of under 40 mg/dL; blood pressure greater than 130 over 85; and glucose level of 110 mg/dL or more.

With the recent introduction of mandatory screening for MetS (to use the official abbreviation), goo Research in conjunction with the Mainichi Shimbun decided to investigate what people think of these metabo examinations.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 6th of April 2008 1,088 members of the goo Research monitor group over the age of 20 completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Further demographic data was not provided. Note that the sample size for some of the questions are not given and that answers have been abbreviated.

I’ve been chosen as a guinea pig for our company screening, but I might have forgotten to attend the test. I’ve lost the bit of paper, I think, and it looked more like an excuse to try to sell me life insurance.

Note that the new screening system is not just getting diagnosed as fat, but also includes health improvement advice and instruction.
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Just about the only thing in Japan that is noticably cheaper than anywhere else is broadband, with 4,000 yen per month (US$40, UK&147;20 or so) being on the expensive side for proper broadband (often 10 Mbps or more). To see how that low price is shaping the market, please study this survey from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into internet usage .

Demographics

Over the 30th of April and 1st of May 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitors completed a private internet-based questionnaire. In the sample the male:female split was exactly 50:50, 20.0% were in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 14.7% in their fifties, and 5.3% aged sixty or older.

The article also notes that the broadband market was worth just under 1.2 trillion yen in 2007, (about 12 billion US dollars), and is predicted to be nearly 1.25 trillion yen this year, and over 1.4 trillion yen by 2012.

The report also does not consider cable to be broadband!
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Eating alone is something I do quite a bit myself, and I do find it relaxing to have peace and quiet for a few minutes every day. To see what image Japanese people have of this, MyVoice recently conducted a survey into this topic of eating alone.

Demographics

Over the first five days of April 2008 14,878 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teens, 14% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 17% in their fifties.

I have two meals a day during the week alone; for breakfast I’m up too early (I’m surprised that wasn’t an offered answer for Q5), and at lunch, as I can’t be bothered eating with my colleagues and the eating noises in the dining hall put me off anyway, so I pop out myself for some bread to eat at my desk. Evening meals alone at restaurants are depressing on the whole, although when I was single there was a nice okonomiyaki shop to while away the hours after work in.
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