From kimono to keitai; research Japanese facts and figures through translated opinion polls and surveys.
With Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net running a group writing project and competition of the subject of Top 5 Things, I thought I’d try entering the competition too with a fun look back at some of the things I’ve learnt through my translation activities for this blog. It’s also a good excuse to summarise some of the sillier posts for the benefit of my newer readers.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on an interesting little poll conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into television at home.
Between the 18th and 19th of April 2007 Cross Marketing interviewed 300 members of their online monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. All the respondents lived in Tokyo or the surrounding area and were mobile phone users. 50.0% were male, 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.
With the soon-approaching analogue switch-off on the 24th of July 2011 (why that date? I must research that!) it would seem that there is quite a bit of scope for the market in both televisions and DVD and hard disk recorders to expand as people buy them as much for the digital tuners as for the other features. My home too is still strictly analogue, but our CRT does have the required digital input plug if we decide to update the VCR alone.
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Over the first five days of April 2007 MyVoice surveyed its internet community regarding the use of word of mouth web sites. To use the popular English buzzword, these sites could also be called CGM sites, or Consumer Generated Media sites, although I think that CGM covers a wider area than the word of mouth sites referenced by this survey.
17,647 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.
I’ve used kakaku.com a few times myself to get ideas of prices and user opinions on home applicances and computer peripherals. The lowest prices they display, however, are potentially misleading, I feel, as I don’t know how or if they account for haggling or for special one-day sales and the like. On the other hand, I do feel their user ratings are quite reliable. Very well worth a visit before purchasing, and their simple star ratings make it very easy to find out which items are best in their class. However, I end up doing most of my buying in a bricks and mortar store.
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I now present yet another slightly odd goo Ranking, this time on what people do when they feel drowsy behind the wheel. As usual, there is no demographic information. The survey was conducted between the 20th and 22nd of March 2007.
Note that there is perhaps some scope for overlap in the answers. For instance, the top option is chewing gum and the fourth is taking caffeine. However, there is at least one brand of gum that contains caffeine, and in fact is advertised on television as a pick-me-up when feeling tired whilst driving.
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Over the first five days of April 2007 MyVoice surveyed its internet community regarding home loans.
17,241 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based survey. 54% were female, 19% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 15% in their fifties. Note that since one needs to be over 20 to get a loan, teenagers were excluded from this survey.
I have a loan, and I fall into the higher brackets in Q3 and Q4. Note that contrary to popular belief, it is not impossible for non-permanent residents to get a home loan, although naturally, any credit scoring that takes place will be rather harsh on those without demonstratable commitment to Japan. I got mine whilst in the process of applying for permanent residency, although they did not ask for any proof that this was actually the case. I am also a full employee (正社員, seishain) of a major company, so that no doubt helped me get a scary multiple of my salary as a loan, one which I am due to be paying off until I am 75…
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Recently japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by goo Research into shareholder meetings.
Between the 19th and 20th of April 2007, goo Research got 1,083 successfully completed replies to their private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% were male, 24.8% in their twenties, 22.5% in their thirties, 21.8% in their forties, 20.7% in their fifties, and 10.2% in their sixties.
Share trading is something I have yet to do in Japan, despite having a company savings scheme, so I cannot really comment much on the results of this survey. Of course one cannot mention shareholder meetings in Japan without mentioning the 総会屋, soukaiya, yakusa-connected extortionists who seek payment in return for not disrupting the company’s AGM. Many companies hold their AGM on the same day to hopefully reduce the chance of being targeted by the mob.
I was surprised by almost one in five shareholders having attended an AGM or the like. Perhaps the more detailed survey results indicates why many people choose to attend. Do companies give away gifts or have food laid on for attendees?
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Between the 1st and 5th of April 2007 MyVoice looked at all-you-can-eat restaurants. This is perhaps a subject dear to many foreigners’ hearts as they can find the portions in Japan a little small. This survey does not, however, cover all-you-can-drink offers.
17,261 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 15% in their fifties.
I’ve got a few favourite all-you-can-eat restaurants in the Kansai area, and we tend to visit about twice a month. Rather than just listing them, let’s try a Google Map of the locations.
Click here to visit my custom Google Maps map.
My number one top spot is Solviva atop of the Hankyu Terminal Building in Umeda. It’s 1,890 yen for a varied selection of Japanese farm cooking, with some organic veggies here and there. There’s about forty dishes to choose from, then another ten or so desserts, organic coffee and tea, and a wonderful view from the counter seats looking north over Osaka. There’s also an alcohol menu with interesting shochu, from boring old wheat or potato base to milk via corn and sesame.
I also discovered this interesting page of reviews of other all-you-can-eat locations in Osaka.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into mobile phone web browser awareness issues. The article reported on here focused mainly on mobile search.
Between the 20th and 23rd of April 2007 330 PC using members of JR Tokai Express Research’s monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.8% of the sample was female, 18.2% in their twenties, 40.9% in their thirties, 27.0% in their forties, 10.3% in their fifties, and 3.6% in their sixties.
I’ve only used mobile search once or twice just to see how it worked, and I used Google’s mobile portal to do the search. It was relatively successful, and it also offered a railway timetable look-up service specifically for Japan, but even though I was using a new Japanese mobile phone, the encoding was all wrong and I just for question marks instead of kanji. Since that experiment, however, I’ve never had the urge to search again.
Note that the “full browser” mentioned in Q1 refers to using a browser that attempts to render standard web pages completely. I’m not sure what the exact qualifications for a full browser is, but I would expect CSS, Javascript and frames at least to be supported. Note that this site can render in some of the newer non-full standard mobile phone browsers, and commenting even works, but all my CSS and Javascript elements are not rendered. Also note that some mobile phones come with full browsers as standard, but for other phones a separate browser needs to be downloaded. In addition, NTT DoCoMo call their service “Full Browser”, au’s is “PC Site Viewer”, and SoftBank’s is “PC Site Browser”.
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Between the 1st and 5th of April 2007 MyVoice looked at the use of mobile phone address books.
17,310 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.
Note that almost all Japanese mobile phones come with phone book facilities, with the latest models providing facilities such as multiple phone numbers and email addresses per name, photographs, physical addresses, web addresses, and additional notes.
When I last upgraded it was a cheap upgrade through work, so I didn’t get my address book copied, and although I borrowed the latest version of a mobile phone backup package that claimed to support my phone, it failed miserably to copy due to the cable not working correctly, so instead I had to resort to using my miniSD to backup and restore, but still it couldn’t keep group information intact over the transfer even though I was changing from DoCoMo mova to DoCoMo FOMA. My wife had similar mail group issues at an official DoCoMo shop. Because groups are such a basic feature, it really it pretty disappointing that shops can’t copy that information, as I’m sure that perhaps puts people off upgrading, knowing that they have to tweak all their address book settings.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on the results of a survey conducted by goo Research into collecting and exchanging points online.
Between the 13th and 15th of April 2007 1,085 members of goo Research’s online monitor group successfully completed an online private questionnaire. 51.7% were male, 24.2% in their twenties, 22.2% in their thirties, 21.8% in their forties, 21.3% in their fifties, and 10.5% in their sixties.
I think this survey is focused not on using shopping points to obtain discounts when purchasing more items, but on points gathered not just from shopping but from other activities such as participating in surveys. Note that since goo Research monitors receive points for filling out surveys, I am not sure if the respondents were to asked to exclude their goo points from their answers.
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