世論 What Japan Thinks

Recently goo Ranking, a Japan public opinion survey organisation, posted the results of a look at the political world from a rather interesting angle. The respondents were asked to choose their most good-looking world politician or leader in a poll conducted between the 25th and 27th of September 2007. Note that this poll drew its sample from the goo Research monitor pool, so there would be little or no opportunity for ballot stuffing. 100 points are awarded to the top vote-getter, and the other scores are the percentage of votes of the winner that each of the rest received. By sex, the votes were very similar, although Tony Blair won more female hearts than Shintaro Ishihara.

I find it surprising that Bill Clinton (or even Al Gore) doesn’t appear anywhere, however, and personally I’d have voted for Nelson Mandela, another curious omission.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into portable digital musics players. Note that this survey is concerned with just hard disk or memory-based specialised music players; CDs and MDs are excluded, as are mobile phones with music playback capabilities, and PDAs.

Demographics

Over the 24th and 25th of October 2007 300 members of Cross Marketing Inc’s online monitor pool who owned a portable digital music player successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample was male, 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

I don’t really think there is much new in this survey, but I present it just as another data point that ilustrates Apple’s strength in the Japanese marketplace.
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I don’t know if it’s seasonal or just that I’ve been prompted to recall them by translating this survey, but there does seem to have been rather a number of advertisements for premium beer on the television and in print these days. The survey that prompted this recall was on my MyVoice into premium beer.

Demographics

Over the first five days of October 2007 16,882 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 17% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 16% in their fifties. Note that since the legal drinking age is 20, no teenagers took part in this survey.

The exact definition of “premium beer” is not discussed, but it is presumably based on price differentiation. Q3 lists the main beers that are considered to be premium. For me, Yebisu is the only one in the list I’d choose; Guinness, a brew I like back in the UK, is brewed under licence here and has a very unpleasant bitter, tarry aftertaste.
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One of the strong images, or is it a stereotype, of Japanese businessmen, and one of the first points of etiquette many foreigners learn before coming to Japan, is the exchanging of business cards. To find out the truth behind this image, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into business card management tools.

Demographics

On the 23th of October 2007 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group employed in either the private or public sectors successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 82.2% of the sample was male, 11.8% were in their twenties, 42.0% in their thirties, 35.6% in their forties, 8.5% in their fifties, and 2.1% in their sixties.

This is one case where the makeup of the JR Tokai Express monitor pool may bias the results. As one of their main recruiting grounds is people riding the shinkansen, and replying to questionnaires awards points that can be exchanged for discounts on shinkansen tickets, they do attract frequent business travellers, and these travellers may be more likely to be sales people, thus more prone to be in situations where exchanging business cards is required.
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As most Apple and iPhone watchers are aware, shortly after releasing the iPhone at $600 they dropped the price to $400, although they did give refund vouchers to many customers. The press thought little of it, although I did not see any statistics to suggest how the average US resident felt. To find out what the average Japanese person felt looking in from the outside, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into Apple’s brand image, and in this article focusing on the iPhone pricing.

Demographics

On the 25th of October 2007 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel employed in either the public or private sectores completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 81.8% of the sample was male, 9.4% were in their twenties, 40.9% in their thirties, 37.9% in their forties, 9.1% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.

As I have no intention of purchasing an iPhone myself, I can’t say I really felt much about their strategy, and given how many fanboys Apple seems to have, I couldn’t really understand the need to cut the price so early.
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A constantly popular destination for Google searches is a survey from two years ago on QR Codes, the rather popular 2D square barcodes that appear all over the place and have been supported by almost every camera-equipped mobile phone for the last few years. To find out how usage patterns are today, let’s look at a recent survey from MyVoice into mobile phone QR Codes.

Demographics

Over the first five days of October 2007 17.091 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 16% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 15% in their fifties.

The results here might be worth cross-referencing against last month’s survey, also from MyVoice, on mobile phone cameras.

Most of the QR codes I scan are from print advertisements, usually in the magazine that comes along with our mobile phone bill every month, and are shortcuts to web pages offering free downloads of various stuff. I do find them very convenient, but I’ve never seem a colour QR code bar in one article I read about them. Whether or not my phone can decode them, I do not know, although I suspect the answer is no.
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With it being just about one full year since MNP, Mobile Number Portability, was introduced to Japan, japan.internet.com reported on goo Research’s 34th regular mobile phone upgrade needs survey, focusing on this MNP issue.

Demographics

Over the 15th and 16th of October 2007 exactly 1,000 mobile phone-using members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.5% of the sample was female, 1.8% in their teens, 19.3% in their twenties, 40.6% in their thirties, 24.2% in their forties, and 14.1% aged fifty or older.

Looking at the data from last year just before MNP was made available, around 18% said they would be interested in taking advantage of MNP, but Q2 shows that after a year less than 4% have actually done so. A similar question that may have been interesting to hear the answers to (or it may indeed have been asked, but not reported on) would be how many have changed provider but not used MNP.
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With the Tokyo Motor Show in full swing, it might be fun to have a look at this ranking survey from goo Ranking into what collaboration projects they’d like to see from car makers. The only demographic information available is that the data was collected between the 25th and 29th of September 2007.
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Here’s this week’s Silly Sunday survey. This time it was goo Ranking looking at aspects of expressing interest, or detecting if interest was being expressed. There was what men think is the most effective way to go for the kill and what women think is the most effective way to go for the kill; then what women’s actions men think indicates they may have a chance and what men’s actions women think indicates they may have a chance. I hope you get the idea, but if not, just read on and all may become clearer! The surveys were conducted between the 25th and 27th of September 2007.
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I omitted to translate an earlier, more detailed, survey on this topic, so instead you’ll have to make do with the highlights from an article published on japan.internet.com regarding a survey conducted by goo Research into disasters.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 22nd of October 2007 1,086 members of goo Research’s online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.5% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 11.7% aged sixty or older.

Whilst we all hope that we don’t need it, there is always the risk of being hit by an earthquake, typhoon or other natural disaster in Japan. One important service offered by NTT is their Disaster Emergency Message Dial, basically an answering machine service that allows people to leave messages accessed through their home phone numbers. The linked site provides full English-language instructions on how to use it. Connected with this are the Broadband Disaster Message Board (web171), and the Mobile Disaster Message Boards, for DoCoMo, au, and SoftBank.

Note that the Broadband Disaster Message Board does not have an English version, which is pretty useless for relatives from overseas who might wish to check up on you, and, when you read the fine print at the bottom of the front page, you see that the recommended OSes are Windows 2000 SP4 and XP SP2, and the recommended broswers are Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0 only. Even better, you cannot interact with the buttons if you have JavaScript disabled, and the w3c validator dies trying to verify the code!

The final service is the Earthquake Early Warning system which detects a quake as soon as it happens, so if you live a little away from the epicentre you get a few seconds warning of the impending shock.
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