My cell phone camera sees rare use, mostly when wifey borrows it to take pictures of food or me when she’s forgotten her own phone. One use she puts her own camera phone to is taking a photograph of the weather forecast on the television then forwarding it to me. I’m sure there must be better ways of letting me know what the weather will be like, but since we can send mails for free, it works for both of us! To see what the average person gets up to, MyVoice looked at the use of mobile phone still and motion cameras.
Demographics
Over the first five days of September 2007 13,602 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 17% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.
Both wifey and I have memory cards for our cell phones; in fact, she has a one gigabyte micro SD card which finds more use as an extra card for our main digital camera, but neither of us use the card for day-to-day storage, only for exporting (never importing!) photographs. Indeed, it would be interesting to find out how other people use their memory cards. Read the rest of this entry »
With Apple’s iPod touch being launched in Japan at the start of this month, October, (although the official Apple Store Japan web site seems to suggest there is a 7 to 10 day lead time for orders) japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into the iPod touch.
Demographics
On the 15th of October 2007 330 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 83.0% of the sample was male, 11.5% in their twenties, 34.5% in their thirties, 37.0% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.
A recent survey suggested that 40% wanted to buy an iPod touch, but given the figures below, not many have yet. The exact reasons for this might make for an interesting topic at a later date. In addition, now over 71% want an iPod touch (curiously enough, a greater percentage than those who know of it, which makes me a bit suspicious of the accuracy of this report), although the previous survey asked if they want to buy, this one just asked if they wanted. Read the rest of this entry »
Last year I translated an interesting survey on kimono, so as perhaps a followup, DIMSDRIVE Research recently took a look at the other Japanese national dress, the suit.
Demographics
Between the 22nd and 31st of August 2007 6,366 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.9% of the sample was female, 1.0% in their teens, 15.3% in their twenties, 35.8% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 6.1% aged sixty or older. In addition, 39.0% of the sample were company employees (including contract employees), 1.6% were executive or board level, 4.2% worked in the public sector, 9.2% were self-employed, 12.9% were part-time or caqsual, and 33.1% were others, which included housewives, students and retired people.
In Q7A, the “aging playboy” option is my translation of a phrase that has been in vogue recently, ちょいワル, choi waru, a shortened form of ちょい悪オヤジ, choi waru oyaji, literally “slightly bad old guy”, an aspirational phrase that is meant to appeal to the middle-aged men’s fashion and lifestyle magazine reading segment of the population. Thinking about western role models, George Cluney and Sean Connery in Italian tailored suits would perhaps be typical choi warui oyaji gaijins.
One suspects that in some of the answers in Q9, the male respondents may have been thinking more about birthday suits. Indeed, I couldn’t find images of many of them in said formal dress, so instead here’s a couple of other Japanese women in suits:
Last year I translated an interesting survey on kimono, so as perhaps a followup, DIMSDRIVE Research recently took a look at the other Japanese national dress, the suit.
Demographics
Between the 22nd and 31st of August 2007 6,366 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.9% of the sample was female, 1.0% in their teens, 15.3% in their twenties, 35.8% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 6.1% aged sixty or older. In addition, 39.0% of the sample were company employees (including contract employees), 1.6% were executive or board level, 4.2% worked in the public sector, 9.2% were self-employed, 12.9% were part-time or caqsual, and 33.1% were others, which included housewives, students and retired people.
I personally hate suits, but own two; one gets dragged out for the very occasional business trip, and the other one is in reserve for funerals. Our office is casual or company uniform, but I am about the only person in the office who wears a shirt (open-necked) on a daily basis, which is perhaps a bit odd.
For the purposes of this survey, a suit was defined as a matching jacket and trousers or skirt. Read the rest of this entry »
Recently japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into browser start pages, in particular in this article, on settings on work computers.
Demographics
One the 16th of October 2007 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group who were employed in the private or public sectors completed a private online questionnaire. 83.1% were male, 10.6% in their twenties, 42.0% in their thirties, 33.8% in their forties, 11.8% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.
The official word is that my employers’ intranet works best with Internet Explorer, although I suspect that is code for “we can’t be bothered testing it with anything else”, and best is a relative term. Anyway, regardless of that, I use Opera as my primary browser as it is easy to switch off images and embedded Flash and other objects, not that I need to do that as I of course never ever visit any non-work-related sites. Actually, Opera 9 is banned because it contains a BitTorrent client which might spontaneously start spewing company secrets, or something. My start page is set to nothing at all, with my home browser set the same way. Internet Explorer is set to point to the intranet just because that’s what I mainly use it for.
Following some feedback on an earlier post, I’ve added in hyperlinks to SQs, as I’ve had at least two people mention my use of (to SQ) was confusing. I hope they help! Read the rest of this entry »
Looking for a cheap tour of Tokyo or the surrounding area this autumn? To help you choose where to go, goo Ranking decided to ask what under 10,000 yen Hato Bus tour from their autumn schedule people would like to go on. As is par for the course, there was no demographic information supplied barring that the fieldwork was carried out between the 25th and 27th of September 2007.
Over the first five days in September 2007 13,886 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 17% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 15% in their fifties. Sadly the percentage of married people is not reported.
I would say I’m most comfortable in my garden and my bedroom, especially now that we’ve just changed to winter sheets! For Q3, outside of sleeping (etc…) I don’t actually use our bedroom for anything. My ideal bedroom colour would be perhaps a pastel green. Read the rest of this entry »
RTFM – Read The Friendly (or substitute other words begining with F) Manual. I wonder if there is a slang expression in Japanese with a similar meaning? To find out whether or not RTFMing goes on in Japan, Cross Marketing Inc produced a report, with the highlights published by japan.internet.com, on the topic of paper manuals for personal computers.
Demographics
Over the 10th and 11th of October 2007 300 members of Cross Marketing Inc’s online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. As usual for Cross Marketing, there was a 50:50 male and female split, and 20.0% in each age band from teens to fifties.
As perhaps a cross-reference, I looked at this topic last year in relation to mobile phone manuals.
I don’t know why in Q1SQ2 they didn’t offer as one of the answers that it is quicker to look up the internet or an electronic manual, or even just phone the support line. I’d love to have seen data for both these actions Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s another of these surveys that I find particularly interesting, looking at perhaps rather trivial matters, but giving answers that I hope one day may prove useful, although where exactly, I just don’t know! This time it was japan.internet.com reporting on a survey by goo Research into mobile phones in general, but in this report they chose to focus on dirty screens on said mobiles.
Demographics
Between the 11th and 15th of October 2007 1,092 members of goo Research’s online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample was male, 17.5% in their teens, 19.8% in their twenties, 17.2% in their thirties, 17.6% in their forties, 17.0% in their fifties, and 10.9% in their sixties.
This survey coincided with the release of a new range of mobile phone screen cleaning mascots from Strapya (very reasonable prices and shipping costs; help What Japan Thinks by buying your cuddly toys through the link above), so join the 10% or so of Japanese cell phone users with cute cleaners! I personally have a Monokuro Boo cubic pig cuddly cleaner on my phone, but I actually just wipe on my sleeve. Read the rest of this entry »
Recently, Yahoo! Japan Value Insight, in conjunction with Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting, took a close look at sports. The full report seems to have lots of interesting information, but this publically-released article contains just the highlights, although these in themselves have some interesting answers.
Demographics
Between the 1st and 4th of September 2007 2,000 members of the Yahoo! Japan Value Insight Questionnaire Panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The group was split 50:50 male and female, and the ages of the respondents ranged from 15 to 69.
One may notice that the traditional national sport of Japan, sumo, does not feature in the top five of Q1
I also found it interesting in Q10 that compared to men, women were more interested in schoolboys than grown men, as it were. High school baseball and the high school golfer found more favour with the females questioned. Read the rest of this entry »
My cell phone camera sees rare use, mostly when wifey borrows it to take pictures of food or me when she’s forgotten her own phone. One use she puts her own camera phone to is taking a photograph of the weather forecast on the television then forwarding it to me. I’m sure there must be better ways of letting me know what the weather will be like, but since we can send mails for free, it works for both of us! To see what the average person gets up to, MyVoice looked at the use of mobile phone still and motion cameras.
[
Recently japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into 
No, we’re not peering at 
RTFM – Read The Friendly (or substitute other words begining with F) Manual. I wonder if there is a slang expression in Japanese with a similar meaning? To find out whether or not RTFMing goes on in Japan, Cross Marketing Inc produced a report, with the highlights published by japan.internet.com, on the topic of 
Recently, Yahoo! Japan Value Insight, in conjunction with Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting, took a close look at 
Subscribe to feed