世論 What Japan Thinks

I think foreign residents in Japan actually seem on average to be better users of chopsticks than the Japanese, although I have absolutely no data to back up that claim, nor a similar claim that most foreigners’ chopstick skills outdo Japanese’s cutlery skills. However, there are a multitude of finer points of etiquette regarding these implements that may not be familiar to many of my readers, nor to me for that matter, so to see what faux pas our hosts may be looking out for, or indeed doing themselves, let’s look at a couple of surveys from goo Ranking on bad chopstick habits people have and bad manners in others that they can’t help noticing. Both surveys were conducted between the 20th and 24th of July 2007.

For me, in Q1 I do 1 rarely, 2 a bit with soba, and 5 sometimes. One manner not noted is rubbing the ends of your sticks together to get rid of splinters, which is apparently an insult to the restaurant or host that you think their chopsticks are cheap and splinter-prone.
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Recently, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into awareness of Google services.

Demographics

On the 7th of August 2007 335 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor panel who were mployed in public or private industry completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The male-female ratio was not reported, but 16.1% were in their twenties, 37.9% in their thirties, 36.1% in their forties, 8.4% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties.

I noted the omission of my favourite Google web application, Google Reader, their online feed reader. Indeed, it’s been quite I while since I last saw an RSS usage survey.

Also, it’s interesting they mention AdWords, the advertisers’ side of Google’s advertising empire, not the publishers’ side, AdSense, which I would have thought would have been more familiar.

CAVEAT: Thanks to Gen Kanai for highlighting the big flaw in this poll, namely that the figures suggest half of all web users always use Google. The text given in Japanese used “always” for the first answer in Q1, but perhaps “frequently” would be a closer reflection on reality. Previous surveys, and a forthcoming one too, suggests people favour Yahoo! by a considerable margin, so the presented 49.0% always using Google must be incorrect.
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Ahh, this is a survey that is sure to be misconstrued and misquoted in the coming weeks and months. Already I’ve seen a poor summary from Kyodo News on Japan Today, and I’m waiting for the usual suspect to throw in his tuppence-worth on it. I’m talking about a recent survey sponsored by the Cabinet Office Japan on the subject of protecting human rights.

Demographics

Between the 21st of June and the 1st of July 2007 3,000 people aged 20 or older were randomly selected from the voter rolls. 1,766 people, or 58.9%, were available and chose to take part in the survey conducted by means of face-to-face interviews. 53.3% were female, 8.1% in their twenties, 16.8% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 20.8% in their fifties, 19.8% in their sixties, and 18.1% aged seventy or older.

In Q15, Hansen’s disease is leprosy.

Q17 is quite timely, with another story just coming to light about three guys who met through the internet with the purpose of doing someone in at random, it seems.

Oh, and the photograph is of ex-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and a couple of human rights mascots, both called Ken. Don’t ask.
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Ahh, this is a survey that is sure to be misconstrued and misquoted in the coming weeks and months. Already I’ve seen a poor summary from Kyodo News on Japan Today, and I’m waiting for the usual suspect to throw in his tuppence-worth on it. I’m talking about a recent survey sponsored by the Cabinet Office Japan on the subject of protecting human rights.

Demographics

Between the 21st of June and the 1st of July 2007 3,000 people aged 20 or older were randomly selected from the voter rolls. 1,766 people, or 58.9%, were available and chose to take part in the survey conducted by means of face-to-face interviews. 53.3% were female, 8.1% in their twenties, 16.8% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 20.8% in their fifties, 19.8% in their sixties, and 18.1% aged seventy or older.

The Dowa issue in Q10 is the problem of treatment from the old Buraku-min caste as there is still some discrimination against them today.

Q13 is a difficult one to decipher. On a superficial level, just 3.2% believe foreigner discrimination is inevitable, which is good, but conversely only about three in ten tag unfair treatment as discrimination. Of course, what sort of unfair treatment the respondent is thinking about is not described, nor is even what sort of foreigner they are basing their answer on.
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Ahh, this is a survey that is sure to be misconstrued and misquoted in the coming weeks and months. Already I’ve seen a poor summary from Kyodo News on Japan Today, and I’m waiting for the usual suspect to throw in his tuppence-worth on it. I’m talking about a recent survey sponsored by the Cabinet Office Japan on the subject of protecting human rights.

Demographics

Between the 21st of June and the 1st of July 2007 3,000 people aged 20 or older were randomly selected from the voter rolls. 1,766 people, or 58.9%, were available and chose to take part in the survey conducted by means of face-to-face interviews. 53.3% were female, 8.1% in their twenties, 16.8% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 20.8% in their fifties, 19.8% in their sixties, and 18.1% aged seventy or older.

The key question is, of course, what do Japanese consider human rights? This question is not directly asked, but Q1 sets the scene by mentioning the eternal and inviolate rights from the Constitution of Japan. This document includes basic rights such as the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. However, it also includes the right to choose and dismiss public officials and universal adult suffrage (Article 15), a right denied to foreigners, and the freedom to choose one’s occupation (Article 22), another right denied to many visa holders. Therefore, it can clearly be seen that the rights available to all citizens are not all available to resident aliens (and I personally believe that Article 15 and perhaps 22 are acceptable), therefore Q12 is not as bad as it sounds.
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Perhaps mainly due to the ease of embedding video into third party web pages, YouTube still has a lead of over three-to-one over its nearest competitor in the Japanese video sharing league. To find out more about how people use these sites, japan.internet.com reported on a survey by Cross Marketing Inc that looked at video file sharing.

Demographics

Over the 8th and 9th of August 2007 300 members of Cross Marketing Inc’s online monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties.

If you want to look at Nico Nico Douga – oops, I’ve just looked at Nico Nico Douga, and new free accounts are limited to access between 2 am and 7 pm. I think their commenting system allows messages to be overlaid on videos, so if anyone knows the details, please leave a message!
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The four most frequent petty vehicular crimes I see in Japan are red light running, no adult seatbelts, not using child seats and, the focus of this article, the use of mobile phones. This was outlawed in Noverber 2004, and although the government reported a significant reduction in accidents caused by the use of mobile phones, there was some scepticism from me and others as to whether this was really due to safer driving and not just due to less reporting. So, japan.internet.com reported on the results of a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into hands-free adapters.

Demographics

Over the 15th and 16th of August 2007 320 car-driving members of Cross Marketing Inc’s online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and 25.0% in their twenties, 25/0% in their thirties, 25.0% in their forties, and 25.0% in their fifties.

You’ll have to buy the full report, I suspect, to find out the most interesting figures, such as when driving how frequently people make or receive calls or email on the mobile phones.
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When this report popped up on japan.internet.com’s web site, I first thought they’d made a mistake and reprinted a survey from last week, but after a double-check I realised that it was actually a rather clever and appropriate follow-on survey to that recent look at how working women viewed their lot in the office, this time JR Tokai Express Research Inc looking at how males perceived male-female disparity in the office.

Demographics

On the 17th of August 2007 331 men from the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group who worked in private industry took part in a private internet-based questionnaire. 100.0% were male, of course, 9.1% were in their twenties, 38.4% in their thirties, 37.8% in their forties, and 14.8% in their fifties.

One thing you might note is that this time those in their thirties and forties form the biggest group, whereas for women more were in their twenties and thirties. This reflects to some extent the reality in Japanese working life that women tend to abandon their careers (I looked before at some of the issues behind this phenomenon)

As noted before, for those studying Japanese, the word used the the questions below was 格差, kakusa, which translates to disparity rather than perhaps 差別, sabetsu, discrimination. I’m not sure how the different wordings might have affected the responses; for me “disparity” describes the state of the workplace, whereas “discrimination” suggests active policies favouring men.
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Second Life from Linden Labs, a virtual world that is gaining a lot of support from major companies in Japan but is still to actually officially launch in the country has been getting a lot of press coverage recently. To find out how it was affecting the average consumer, MyVoice performed a survey about using Second Life.

Demographics

Over the first five days of August 2007 12,386 members of the MyVoice online community successfully completed an online survey. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

I’m not sure what the correct verb to use for being in Second Life is. “Play” seems too trivial and “be” sounds pompous, so I’ll just stick with the neutral but dull “use”, which is actually the direct translation of the Japanese verb used by MyVoice.

I’m sure one could draw conclusions from Q2, where the image of being unable to communicate with foreigners was stronger than that of being able to communicate with them!
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This seems a rather odd little survey, although perhaps the nature of many of these reports from japan.internet.com is that they heavily abbreviate the full research resulting in rather difficult to understand results, as seems to be the case here. This time they reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into software.

Demographics

Over the 1st and 2nd of August 2007 300 members of Cross Marketing Inc’s monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties.

You’ll notice when you compare the categories in Q1 and Q3 that there are many well-known free software titles that fall into the Q1 options but don’t appear in Q3, with of course Linux in the Operating System category being the most obvious omission – did users categorise it as a security-related application, a general tool, a server or under the Other catch-all?
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