世論 What Japan Thinks

Here’s a fun little ranking survey from DIMSDRIVE Research: as part of their 117th Ranking Survey they asked members of their monitor group what they did when by themselves in a lift (or elevator).

Demographics

Between the 9th and 17th of May 2007 7,735 members of their monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 44.3% of the sample was male.

I can guess what you’re thinking is one of the things the Japanese do, and yes, they do admit to doing that! The women are not as frequent as the men, despite a suspicion I had that perhaps they saved them up from when they were at home.
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goo Ranking published a short ranking survey on the topic of which traditional culture people might like to learn. Demographical information is not present. The survey was conducted between the 19th and 20th of April 2007.

For me, I’d like to take up Go (I used to play as a kid) and calligraphy. I think I’d be more of the large-scale kind of guy with a huge broom slapping the ink on the canvas by the gallon in the hope of making up in quantity what I’m lacking in quality.

I’m a bit surprised, I suppose, seeing origami in there (another one I did as a kid) as it doesn’t feel to me like a traditional art. I’ve also never heard of carving Buddhas as being a traditional art! I’ve also once made a fan (badly) and had a day out at a traditional Kyoto Yuzen dyeing factory.

Do you participate in any traditional arts?
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MyVoice recently published the results of a survey they conducted on the topic of convenience store multimedia terminals. This is apparently the fourth time they have conducted this survey, although the results of previous surveys are not mentioned.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 5th of May 2007 14,945 members of MyVoice’s 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, 28% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

I’ve used these terminals about once every six months or so, exclusively for completing the purchase of tickets ordered by phone. Perhaps to save on delivery costs, when booking concert tickets by phone the most popular payment option seems to be via these terminals. You get a four-digit code over the phone, you go to the machine, type in your code and your home telephone number, the machine prints out a confirmation order form that you take to the counter, where the staff take your cash and print out your desired tickets.
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With summer fast approaching and the Meteorological Agency predicting it will be a hotter than average summer over most of the country, let’s take a look at a recent survey by DIMSDRIVE Research regarding air conditioners

Demographics

Between the 18th and 26 of April 2007 DIMSDRIVE Research received 8,925 valid replies to a private internet-based questionnaire circulated around members of its monitor panel. 54.5% of the sample was female, 0.8% in their teens, 13.4% in their twenties, 35.8% in their thirties, 30.2% in their forties, 14.3% in their fifties, and 5.5% aged sixty or older. As a bonus demographic fact, 27.3% of the sample had a pet.

My current domicile is cooled mostly by Daikin air conditioners, which I wouldn’t really recommend to anyone, but we ended up being sort-of stuck with them. My previous residence was all National/Panasonic, which are very good. However, I have on reliable authority that the cleaning robots inside some of the newer models are very noisy, and it was my experience that unless you are a smoker or live close to a busy road, cleaning is not really that bothersome.

Note that in Q5, according to the Cool Biz and Warm Biz initiatives you should set your heating to 20 degrees Celcius in the winter and 28 degrees Celcius in the summer. Barely one in five during the summer and perhaps the similar amount in the winter follow this advice.

As a side note on the usage of drum-type washing machines, I suggested to my Japanese wife that our next washing machine be a drum type as they use less water, but she said she’d lose the ability to wash blankets and other large items.
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japan.internet.com reported on the start of a new series of regular surveys being conducted by goo Research on the subjet of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Demographics

Over the 14th and 15th of May 2007, goo Research interviewed by means of a private internet-based questionnaire 1,087 members of its monitor panel. 47.1% of the sample was female, 11.7% in their teens, 21.3% in thier twenties, 19.4% in their thirties, 18.4% in their forties, and 29.2% in their fifites.

I think my opinion of Wikipedia is best expressed by the Wikipedia Nofollow WordPress plugin I developed. I feel it pollutes search results as bloggers tend to lazily quote it as it is the handiest reference, reinforcing its strength and putting it on top of Google searches for far too many keywords. In addition, with its nofollow policy, it doesn’t acknowledge its sources in the eyes of search engines, thus strengthening its position in the search engine optimisation wars.
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goo Research, in conjuction with the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, published the results of a very timely and interesting poll on the topic of, as it is known in Japanese, Akachan Post, Baby Post, or a place to drop off babies anonymously. The first in Japan opened at the Jikei Hospital in Kumamoto just last month ago, and has already received one rather inappropriate delivery.

Demographics

The demographics for this survey are not terribly well-reported. All that is given is that between the 27th and 30th of April 2007, 1,092 members of the goo Research monitor group aged 20 or above successfully completed a private online questionnaire.

This survey is a little short, but I was surprised by nearly two-thirds supporting the baby drop-off services, and nearly half the sample wishing in fact to see more Akachan Posts. I was pleased to see that people consider education the best way of managing the problem of abandoned children.
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japan.internet.com reported on another small but interesting survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the use of office suites. this survey is timely with Nihon University recently announcing that from April 1st this year they would be using Google Apps, and Ashisuto have announced they are moving from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org.

Demographics

On the 17th of May 2007, 330 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor pool completed an internet-based private survey. All were employed in public or private industry, 73.6% were male, 13.3% in their twenties, 40.3% in their thirties, 34.2% in their forties, 9.7% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

This result is not particularly surprising, given that other surveys have shown a virtual monopoly by Microsoft in the workplace for browsers and operating systems.

I personally haven’t used either OpenOffice.org or Google Apps, and work has corporate licences for Microsoft Office, and given the rather heavy reliance on PowerPoint (if I were in management here, I’d ban it) in particular, I cannot see any prospect of change. Interestingly, perhaps, a couple of months ago we gathered together money-saving tips, but no-one suggested using open source office applications to save on licensing. However, given that all other departments would be using Office, without 100% compatability we couldn’t change. In addition, many macro-filled Excel spreadsheets are used within the company, so I suspect they would not be usable in other spreadsheet tools.
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Given that it seems most people upgrade their cell phones once every year or so (I actually haven’t seen any data for this!), MyVoice decided to look at the issue of mobile phone recycling.

Demographics

Over the first five days of May 2007, 15,165 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 46% of the sample was male, 2% in thier teens, 18% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

I passed my previous phone back to a DoCoMo shop for recycling, and I suppose I have to trust them to completely reset all the internal memory. Mobile phone manuals are often huge tomes that are rather difficult to find your way around – I’d prefer to refuse them for a small discount, and rely on some decent web search to find what I’m looking for. On their web site, DoCoMo offer PDF copies of their manuals for download, so I wonder why they don’t promote manual-less phones?

Note that most of the 3G Japanese phones come with SIM cards, so old phones can be used by just inserting the current, live card into the old phone.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted by goo Research on the subject of email.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 19th of May 2007 1,084 members of goo Research’s internet monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.1% of the sample was male, 16.9% in their teens, 19.6% in their twenties, 18.2% in their thirties, 17.2% in their forties, 17.1% in their fifties, and 11.2% aged sixty or older.

I have at least five main mail addresses, or eight if I include three mainly spam-collecting Gmail accounts, although all these accounts get read through Becky!. Spam is probably about 25 per day (Gmail silently swallows some huge amount, I suspect), although if I only count those missed by SpamAssassin, it’s closer to five to ten.
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goo Ranking recently published, as selected by goo Research’s monitor pool over the 19th and 20th of April 2007, Japan’s most curiously-named stations.

Some of the names are amusing, others are strange, and a few more I just don’t get! Any help would be more than welcome.

Note that the number one choice is Japan’s longest station name. This title used to be held by 「ルイス・C.ティファニー庭園美術館前駅」, “Louis C Tiffany Garden Museum Mae Station”, but the museum closed down and the station was renamed to the slightly shorter 「松江イングリッシュガーデン前駅」, “Matsue English Garden Mae Station”, apparently on the 21st of May 2007. Note that at the time of writing, Wikipedia wrongly reports this as the longest Japanese station name in a link from their Louis C Tiffany page.

To help you locate the places, I’ve made a custom Google Map for all these stations.
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