世論 What Japan Thinks

infoPLANT recently published a survey that looked into the usage of fee-charging mobile phone sites. The fieldwork for the self-selecting survey was conducted over a week from the 3rd to 10th of April 2007.

Demographics

5,207 people chose to fill out a public questionnaire available through the NTT DoCoMo iMode menuing system. 39.4% of the sample was male, 3.2% in their teens, 31.0% in their twenties, 43.4% in their thirties, 19.0% in their forties, and 3.4% aged fifty or older.

This survey is notable for one figure I’d been hoping to find in regards to infoPLANT, namely how many of their respondents are on fixed-price data programs, or パケ放題, pakehoudai, plans as they are known in Japanese. This survey had five in six of the respondents on these deals. This higher than I expected figure should always be borne in mind when reading future or past infoPLANT self-selecting iMode surveys, as this class of user does not need to worry about, for instance, the rather horrendously large bill that can be run up downloading an audio track; nearly 9,000 yen on a standard plan for a 5 megabyte audio file, and still around 450 yen on DoCoMo’s best discounted packet deals. Investigating further, the percentage of customers who have unlimited packet plans was around 27% as of September 2006 (see page 27) and about 30% at the end of 3Q 2006 (31st December 2006) (see page 2), so one can see the bias inherent in this kind of open survey conducted by infoPLANT.

Also note, even if you are on an unlimited packet program, if you use your mobile phone as a modem, these data packets are not free; stories have been recently circulating about people not reading the fine print correctly and running up over a million yen in data transmission charges!
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Between the 1st and 5th of April 2007 MyVoice surveyed its online community regarding their feelings regarding global warming. New visitors may want to check out previous environmental-themed surveys.

Demographics

17,500 people completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

I’ve not seen “An Inconveient Truth” myself, although my wife did go to see the Japanese subtitled version. She did find the message compelling, but she couldn’t recommend the movie itself as she felt the tone was too hectoring, although I don’t know if that was a fault with the original version or of the translation.
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With Japan’s Golden Week holidays almost upon us, and with the submission deadline for the April Japan Blog Matsuri just 10 days away, I would like to present my entry, another slightly strange from a Western point of view ranking survey from goo Ranking on what people would most like to eat after returning from a foreign holiday. The survey was conducted between the 20th and 22nd of March 2007.

One may note that a number of the entries in the list are actually recently-imported dishes: number 9, curry, is the first obvious one, but Japanese “curry” (stew with a hint of spice, usually) and sticky rice is quite a different experience from a real curry such as one might find in the UK.

This survey might also go some way to explaining why so many Japanese, even those going as far as the International Space Station, find they need to pack a few Cup Noodles in their suitcases.
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Spring is sprung and the sap is rising, and young thoughts turn to love, so let’s enjoy a recent survey from goo Research, conducted between the 27th and 29th of March 2007 amongst 555 single youths, most in their twenties, from all over Japan, on the matters of love and laughter. Note that the male-female split is not reported.

It does seem a rather disjoint pair of topics, but the answers are rather interesting. I do find it amusing that half as many women are in love than men, which perhaps prompts the question “what exactly does ‘love’ mean to you?” Alternatively, perhaps it is the unwillingness of men to commit themselves to a serious relationship, or just that women have stronger passions than men.

Note that the word used in the survey for being in love is 恋愛, ren’ai.

Let’s get a little personal, ack, no, let’s not get too personal, as I’ll sound far too soppy! I’ll just say it was common values that was the main spark for me, as well as that special magic, and it didn’t take too long (a month and a half?) for me to realise that we would marry. Oh, and we met through an “Other” method.
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As part of their 113th Ranking Research, DIMSDRIVE Research looked at what people’s little luxuries were.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 22nd of March 5,537 members of their online community successfully completed a private internet-based survey. 45.0% of the sample was male.

It’s interesting to note that seven out of the ten directly involve eating, and one could argue that taking a trip to an onsen is as much for the food as the bath. By the way, I don’t know why “eating out” and “eating at a restaurant” are listed separately, although I suspect if they grouped together all the eating options there might not be many other answers left!
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of research conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the use of melody calls. This is the service (and a trademark of NTT DoCoMo) whereby when someone calls a phone, instead of getting a standard tone, instead music selected by the phone owner gets played, a sort of reverse ringtone for the caller instead of the callee.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 9th of April 2007 330 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s monitor group answered a private internet-based questionnaire. 47.3% of the sample was male, 21.8% in their twenties, 38.5% in their thirties, 20.3% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 5.2% in their sixties.

Currently only NTT DoCoMo and au by KDDI support this feature. The DoCoMo feature is named “Melody Call”, and au’s translates as “EZ Waiting Music”. SoftBank does not offer such a service. In March DoCoMo reported they attained over 10 million subscribers to the service, whereas au reported 1 million contracts. However, DoCoMo offers a feature package of Melody Call plus answer phone, call waiting and call forwarding for a price only 100 yen more expensive than the standard answer phone service, so perhaps their extremely high figures can be attributed to people buying the package and getting the Melody Call bundled rather than suggesting a huge desire for the feature alone. Indeed, with only 13.6% of users in this survey reporting that they are currently using the service I suspect there is a significant percentage of people who are not actually aware or have forgotton that they signed up to it.

I’ve personally never heard a melody call ring tone, but that’s probably because I don’t make many outgoing calls.
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Excuse the rather clumsy headline, but Macromill recently interviewed 309 members of their internet research monitor group who currently worked as either private or public employees and expressed a wish to enter or re-enter further education as mature students.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 5th of April 2007 309 people completed a private online questionnaire; 66.0% were male, 35.6% in their twenties, 42.1% in their thirties, 18.8% in their forties, and 3.6% in their fifties. All of them were considering entering a Japanese university as an under-graduate or post-graduate within the next five years.

In addition, 13.9% were married with no children, 27.8% married with children, 52.8% were single with no children, 0.6% were single, with children, but didn’t need to support them, and 1.3% were married with children that didn’t need to be supported. Regarding education levels, 11.0% had post-graduate qualifications, 57.6% had graduated from university, 14.2% attended college, 16.2% attended up to high school, 0.3% to middle school, and 0.6% didn’t answer.

Sadly, this survey does not highlight those wishing to do MBAs. Additionally, a number of UK and USA universities offering distance learning MBA courses in conjuction with Japanese institutions, but whether or not these would be counted as Japanese courses for the sake of this survey is not clear.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on goo Research’s sixth regular Social Networking Service (SNS) sruvey.

Demographics

Between the 9th and 11th of April 2007 1,086 members of goo’s online monitor group completed a questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample were male, 17.4% in their teens, 19.9% in their twenties, 17.9% in their thirties, 17.5% in their forties, 16.5% in their fifties, and 10.9% in their sixties.

I supose satisfaction levels are a given, as people wouldn’t tend to use SNSs if they weren’t enjoying them, although it does seem that 3% are soldiering on regardless.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the matter of the use of open source software in the public sector.

Demographics

On the 9th of April 2007, 332 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. All of the respondents worked in the public sector. 82.5% were male, 7.5% in their twenties, 38.3% in their thirties, 42.2% in their forties, 9.6% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

A number of years ago an initiative to promot the use of Linux within local goverment and other public sector locations was started, with many local authorities and the IPA, Information-technology Promotion Agency, carrying out open source software trials, but this survey suggests that the penetration at the client side has been minimal.

Note that a previous survey covering both the private and public sectors also found there was an overwhelming majority of Windows users.
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into mobile phone body types. Previous surveys have indicated the Japanese love for both clamshell designs and skinny models.

Demographics

Over the 11th and 12th of April 2007 300 members of Cross Marketing’s online monitor pool successfully completed a private internet-based survey. All the respondents were mobile phone users living in Tokyo and the surrounding area. As usual for Cross Marketing, there was a 50:50 male and female split, 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.

I was surprised to see only one person say they had a Sharp’s AQUOS Keitai. This is the best selling phone design, featuring a quite stunning hinge that they call the Cycloid, it seems. The phone opens like a clamshell, but then the screen can be rotated 90 degrees around a central pivot to allow the user to watch One Seg television in landscape mode.
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