世論 What Japan Thinks

Japan may be one of the top producers of the latest home electrical items, but is it a big consumer of what it produces? With the smallness of the average home being perhaps a factor, how many gadgets make their way to the consumer? Recently infoPLANT (who seem to be in the process of changing their name to Yahoo! Japan Value Insight) published the results of a short survey on home electricals ownership and purchasing plans. Note that this survey was conducted just a month before the summer bonus season started, so perhaps some of the respondents were thinking about what they wanted to buy.

Demographics

Over a week from the 29th of May to the 4th of June 2007 infoPLANT made the survey available through the menuing system of NTT DoCoMo’s iMode mobile phone system, where 6,606 people, 63.2% female, self-selected themselves and successfully completed the survey.

Personally, we manage just a big fridge, an air purifier and a video camera, and perhaps we would like sometime to buy a hard disk recorder.
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…of in the summer, just to finish off the dangling headline. I’m back from my holidays, and back to stupidly hot temperatures around double of what I left back in the UK and Germany, so to tie in with the hot and humid weather right now (and it’s going to get a lot hotter and more humid before it’s done) let’s look with goo Ranking at what summer smells people hate. As usual for these ranking surveys, demographic information is not available, just that on the 22nd and 23rd of May a number of members of the goo Research monitor group completed an online survey on this topic.

One may notice that the top pong, body odour, relates to one of these things that foreigners hear (perhaps only from other foreigners?) about how the Japanese don’t sweat.

Finally, the kanji used in the headline, 悪臭, akushuu, consists of two kanji for bad and smell, and means exactly that.
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I’ve never heard (as it were) of people surfing under voice control at work (excluding swearing at the browser for crashing or the internet for being slow, of course) but a recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on browsing at work showed that these sort of people do exist.

Demographics

On the 7th of June 2007 333 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor pool employed in private industry completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 70.9% of the sample were male, 10.5% in their twenties, 52.0% in their thirties, 29.1% in their forties, 6.0% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

Sadly there was no question asked (or at least not reported) on how much of the time was spent on work-related versus private-related activities. Our workplace strictly forbids private surfing.

Q2 is a bit confusing to answer regarding feed reading – does using services like Google Reader or Bloglines count as using a feed reader? Therefore, I find the figures in that table a bit unreliable. I also wonder why so many people don’t know how they are surfing.
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One of things my employer does manage to do right with my corporate mail box is keep it almost free from spam, with barely one per day getting past the filters, although I have no idea how many spams get caught, but I suspect it may be quite a few as my work email address can be found in postings on the internet. Sadly, a recent survey published by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on the topic of workplace email does not report on how much of an issue spam is in the average workplace.

Demographics

On the 8th of June 2007 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group who worked in private industry completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 73.0% of the sample was male, 13.3% in their twenties, 45.5% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 8.5% in their fifties, and 5.5% in their sixties.

Daily mail volume at work is probably close to 70 or so, including corporate internal semi-spam. However, … ahh, I must apply some self-censorship here, so just read the results, please.
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This is one of these surveys that catches my eye and informs and entertains me at the same time, but also frustrates me as I’d love to learn more. What are mobile phones? Toys, fashion statements, or just lumps of plastic and electronics? japan.internet.com reported on a recent survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc on mobile phone obsessions. The article just presented a summary of some of the more interesting questions asked.

Demographics

Over the 6th and 7th of June 2007 300 mobile phone-using members of Cross Marketing’s online monitor group completed a private internet-based survey. The group 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, and 20.0% in their fifties.

Note, I translated one of these difficult to get the right nuance for Japanese words, こだわる, kodawaru, as obsess, although perhaps the English word is a bit too strong.

In Q3, looking at other people’s phones, I wonder how much is checking out the actual phone type versus checking out their dangly bits or trying to sneak a peek at their email…
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I rarely use my mobile phone camera, with just the occassion snapping of a QR Code or the taking of memos of product names or part numbers for when going shopping, but I would find I missed it if it wasn’t there. To find out how others feel, goo Research conducted a survey (reported on by japan.internet.com) on the subject of mobile phone camera.

Demographics

Over the 8th and 9th of June 2007 goo Research interviewed 1,094 members of their monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.1% of the sample were male, 17.2% in their teens, 19.5% in their twenties, 17.9% in their thirties, 17.5% in their forties, 16.8% in their fifties, and 11.1% aged sixty or older,.

I’m not sure exactly of how many megapixels my mobile’s camera has, but I think it’s somewhere between one and two megapixels, and about 300,000 pixels on the inside camera. However, I wonder how much of the dissatisfaction with the megapixel count comes from setting the image capture size too low then importing the photos to a PC. My camera goes up to 1,280 by 960, but I can only take half a dozen photos before I run out of memory, so I usually use a lower resolution.
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Much as I might have thought that there would be a sizeable geek population who would have a copy of Linux installed somewhere on one of their home machines, especially given the multiple machine ownership data, a recent article published on japan.internet.com regarding a survey conducted by goo Research on the topic of computers at home suggests otherwise.

Demographics

Between the 15th and 17th of June 2007 1,087 members of goo Research’s monitor pool successfully completed an online questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample was male, 17.4% in their teens, 19.7% in their twenties, 17.8% in their thirties, 17.3% in their forties, 17.0% in their fifties, and 10.9% aged sixty or older.

I’m Windows XP on my one home-brew, and if I were upgrading, the main factors controlling my decision would of course be price, followed by at least one gigabyte of memory and perhaps 150 gigs of hard disk. One gig of RAM – I remember when I was a kid trying to persuade my father to let my brother and I raid our savings to buy a 16K ZX81 wobbly RAM pack for a mere £100.
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What do Japanese men think being handsome is? Do they themselves want to be handsome? This rather intriguing subject was investigated in a survey conducted by DIMSDRIVE Research and sponsored by DIME magazine, a rather popular trend-watching magazine. I hope there will be a follow-up for the women to describe what they think a man is, or for them to describe beautifulness.

Demographics

Over the 31st of May and the first of June 2007 2,990 male members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group replied to a private internet-based questionnaire. 0.7% were in their teens, 9.6% in their twenties, 26.5% in their thirties, 34.5% in their forties, 19.2% in their fifties, and 9.5% aged sixty or older.

I wouldn’t consider myself handsome (note that the word I translated as “handsome” is 男前, otokomae, although the meaning is perhaps closer to having an aura of manliness or charisma. The ALC dictionary amusingly translates it as studmuffin!), but I think (or at least I hope!) my wife would disagree. As for my regular personal grooming habits, I don’t think that pulling out nose hairs with my bare hands at home or at the office really counts for much. You may also note that getting one’s teeth regularly descaled or whitened didn’t rate even in the Other category of Q6.

If I were to name a handsome man, I’d probably choose Sean Connery.
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Many Japanese hold the dream of retiring overseas (or do they? I must look up data!), so goo Ranking decided to investigate this issue by asking an unspecificed number of the goo Research online monitor group of unspecified ages if they were to retire and move overseas, which country or area would they most like to live in. The fieldwork for this research was conducted on the 22nd and 23rd of May 2007.

Perhaps connected to this, wifey has recently applied to Hilton Grand Vacations Club for us to go along and attend a 90 minute seminar on timeshares in Hawaii in return for 10,000 yen’s worth of food coupons. They are running the seminars every weekend at Tokyo and Osaka, so if you’re particularly bored this summer and don’t mind enduring some hard sell, why not go along and get free cash off them?

If I were to do so, going back to Blighty would seem like the obvious choice, but if we exclude there, New Zealand is the most attractive location, a bit like Scotland only with slightly better weather.

(I’ve just checked my dictionary, and the Antipodes is a rather UK-centric term for Australia and New Zealand)
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If you hang around engineer-related web sites too long you get the impression that everyone is building their own computer in a desparate attempt to demonstrate that theirs is bigger than yours. But, what about in Japan? I’ve never tried asking my co-workers what they do, so perhaps this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on the topic of building your own PC can be an excuse to ask them about their habits.

Demographics

On the 6th of June 2007 331 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s monitor panel who were either employed or did in their spare time software development, system development, or system management successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 93.1% of the sample was male, 7.6% in their twenties, 37.8% in their thirties, 45.9% in their forties, 8.2% in their fifties, and 0.6% in their sixties.

Perhaps other married people can relate to me, but since tying the knot my PC budget has disappeared, so barring when a video card and a hard disk died, I’ve not delved into my computer for many a year.
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