世論 What Japan Thinks

One thing one may notice after being around Japanese salarymen is that their tools of the trade, as it were, are much smaller than that of the average American business-person, but they still do pack quite a considerable punch and they are rather proud of the features of their home-grown models. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not the headline and the preceding sentence have anything to do with a recent survey conducted by Yahoo! Japan Value Insight on the subject of notebook (laptop) computers and Japanese businessmen.

Demographics

Between the 3rd and 8th of August 2007 Yahoo! Japan Value Insight gathered the opinions of 16,526 members of their online monitor panel. All were male, and the sample had almost exactly 25% (plus or minus two people) in each of the age bands of twenties, thirties, forties and fifties. 14,037 of the sample, or 84.9%, went on domestic business trips at least once per month. This group was asked Q1. In addition, a smaller group of 2,000 businessmen registered with mpack, the mobile monitor group of Yahoo! Japan Value Insight, who went on business trips at least once a month carrying a notebook computer were asked the more detailed questions Q2 to Q8. This group was made up of 500 people in their twenties, 500 in their thirties, 500 in their forties, and 500 in their fifties. Note that business trip covers both day trips and overnight stays, or even just visiting another branch of the same company in the same city.

There’s a mass of fascinating data in this survey! For instance, Q1 on what people take with them on business trips; old guys prefer carrying a digital camera to a notebook computer; indeed why do almost three in ten take a digitial camera with them?

Although Panasonic loses out badly to Apple in the portable audio player battlefield, here they beat everyone in terms of sales and are only just edged out by the Mac in terms of user satisfaction.

Finally, I must add that I am another satisfied Let’s Note user.
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According to a recent survey on robots conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com, domestic robots are broadly welcomed, but there is strong reluctance towards letting robots help out with the softer skills.

Demographics

One the 4th of September 2007 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor panel employed in the public and private sectors answered a private internet-based questionnaire. 77.3% of the sample was male, 12.7% in their twenties, 38.7% in their thirties, 33.8% in their forties, 13.9% in their fifties, and 0.9% in their sixties.

A Roomba might be nice around our living room to occassionally scoot around and pick up fluff and crumbs from under the sofa and the table, although I don’t really see it as a substitute for my weekly hoovering, just something that makes my job a bit easier on Sunday mornings. I don’t really see how a clothes washing robot could be effectively made; tasks like hanging out the washing, for instance, are rather intricate, and going around the house picking up dirty clothes is a nice image but impractical given the current state of the art in robotics.
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Here’s another entertaining find from goo Ranking, this time the top ten actions that women think makes men look manly. The fieldwork was conducted between the 20th and 24th of July 2007, but as usual no further demographic information was available.

Sadly there is no guys rating women equivalent of this survey published yet, but if it appears I’ll be sure to report on it.

I thought that smoking activities were rather high on the list, and does choosing a drink for the ladies really impress them? Quite frankly, most of the answers are characteristics I might expect to see in hosts, not the average guy. Perhaps these results go some way to explain why host bars exist?
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Just when you thought the survey companies (and this web site too, it must be said) had flogged Apple’s yet-to-be-released-in-Japan iPhone to death, along comes the new iPod Touch and a new excuse to look at Japan’s love affair with Apple’s portable devices. First out of the starting gate was Yahoo! Japan Value Insight with a detailed survey on Apple’s iPod Touch.

Demographics

Over the 8th and 9th of September 2007 400 people from Yahoo! Japan Value Insight’s online monitor pool answered a private internet-based questionnaire. All respondents owned portable audio devices, from digital players to CD players, MD players, and even cassette players. The group was split 50:50 male and female, but no details on the age profile was given.

Note that the full survey covered people’s existing players, the iPhone and the iPod Touch in more detail.

Note also that the question the headline answers refers more to a desire to be in possession of the two new devices rather than a specific willingness to turn up at a store with cash in hand.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into the subject of losing portable electronic devices.

Demographics

On the 23rd of August 2007 331 members of JR Tokai Express Research Inc’s online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 63.4% were male, 17.5% in their twenties, 31.7% in their thirties, 32.6% in their forties, 14.5% in their fifties, and 3.6% in their sixties.

Last year I translated a similar survey on forgetting electronic items which might be useful as a cross reference. I’ve not lost anything more since the last questionnaire, although I nearly did leave my notebook computer in a restaurant only to get the staff return it to me as I was paying the bill.
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Here’s a topic I haven’t seen a survey on for a while – perhaps it is no longer the next big thing? To find out if that is the case or not, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc on the topic of podcasting.

Demographics

On the 31st of August 2007 330 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor pool employed in either public service or private enterprises completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 83.3% of the group was male, 15.5% in their twenties, 37.3% in their thirties, 35.8% in their forties, 9.7% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.

The best thing about these podcast surveys is that it gives me an excuse to plug my favourite podcast, indeed the only podcast I listen to, Transpacific Radio, for the most detailed English news you can get on the Japanese worlds of politics, business, and occasionally even Duran Duran.

As I just listen to the one podcast, I don’t use any aggregator, I just directly download from TPR’s RSS feed for playback in Windows Media Player – I dislike using iPods.
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If one hangs out at places like slashdot for too long one gets the impression that almost all the software engineers usually use free office suites such as OpenOffice.org, and only resort to Microsoft Word and friends under threats of physical violence from pointy-haired bosses. However, that is the USA; what about Japan and the average engineer? To find out, japan.internet.com reported on a survey recently conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into office suite software.

Demographics

On the 18th of August 2007 330 IT engineers involved in software development, system development and system management completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 96.4% of the sample was male, 1.2% in their twenties, 26.7% in their thirties, 59.1% in their forties, 12.7% in their fifties and 0.3% in their sixties. This sample seems to have a definite case of “metabo” (“metabolic syndrome”, or more simply a lot of fat around the middle!); JR Tokai Express does have a middle management bias, but only 1.2% in their twenties seems extremely low.

Back in May I translated another similar survey on office suite usage in the public and private sectors, where we saw 97.1% used Microsoft Office, a very similar figure to the one reported below when looking at just the IT engineering segment, a perhaps counter-intuitive result.
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Here’s another fun pair of ranking surveys – this time it’s a look at what the under thirties want to do before they reach thirty and what the over thirties wish they had done before they were thirty. The fieldwork was carried out between the 20th and 24th of July 2007.

For me, the big thing I wished I’d done by thirty was worked abroad; I did get an opportunity to go to work in Paris for at least six months when I was about 27 or so, but I thought of too many excuses as to why I shouldn’t or couldn’t take up the offer. Regretting turning that down was one of the reasons I jumped at the chance of coming to Japan, in fact. Finding a local was also something I suppose I would have liked to have done, but I’d probably have turned into a horrendous alcoholic had I managed!
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Here’s another look at cell phone One Seg, this time by goo Research as reported by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 31st of August and the 3rd of September 1,072 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% were male, 17.3% in their teens, 20.1% in their twenties, 17.0% in their thirties, 17.7% in their forties, 17.0% in their fifties, and 11.1% aged sixty or older.

I’ve posted a number of One Seg digital terrestrial television surveys recently, so I suppose there is not much terribly new here, but with more polls and more data points saying roughly the same thing, one can be more confident about the accuracy of the data.

An interesting extra fact from this report was that on the 16th of August 2007 au announced that they had made their 5 millionth contract for a One Seg-compatible phone.
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I just spotted an interesting survey from Japundit on who the Japanese think do the nation proud internationally. The original from Oricon can be found here, where it says that the fieldwork was conducted between the 16th and 20th of August 2007 by means of an internet-based questionnaire posed to 2,000 members of its online monitor panel. The group was split 50:50 male and female, and there were 200 of each sex in five demographic groups; high school students, college and university students, people in their twenties not in education, in their thirties, and in their forties. I believe that they were only allowed to chose people from the entertainment and sporting worlds.

It’s an interesting list; see Japundit for the full details, but Ichiro top for men seems odd from my point of view, but perhaps not odd if I think from a Japanese perspective. Ken Watanabe and Beat Takeshi are good choices for two and three, but then there’s Kimu-taku (Takuya Kimura), one of the pretty boys from SMAP, a long-running boy band. Similarly Kazunari Ninomiya of Arashi, despite having appeared in “Letters from Iwo Jima”, is another odd choice, as just being a singer does not really contribute that much to the world at large. However, as a Scot, I’m glad to see Shunsuke Nakamura in at number six as he struts his stuff at Glasgow Celtic Football Club as proves that number 7, Hideki Nakata, was not just a one-off.

For the women, I find it a bit harder to comment, and if you asked the average person in the street in Europe or the USA, I suspect the only Japanese female people could name would be Yoko Ono (who is, I believe, actually a naturalised American these days). About the only other I am really familiar with is Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, who does a lot of good charity work for UNICEF.