世論 What Japan Thinks

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

The Norinchukin Bank recently released the results of a survey they commissioned into fathers, their eating habits, and what they are teaching their children about food.

Demographics

The survey was conducted between the 22nd of November and 7th of December in 2006, amongst fathers living in and around the Tokyo area, with 400 men aged between 30 and 49 were interviewed. Although it is not clearly stated, I believe all the men surveyed were full-time employment.

The survey results were on the whole presented not in tabular form, but as highlights of the answers given to the posed questions. I will retain the same style in this write-up.

Part one looked at eating habits. I found the drinking habits interesting; note that only 7% of drinkers do not drink with their evening meal.
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japan.internet.com recently publishd the results of a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into the use of music playback features in mobile phones. Between the 7th and 8th of March they interviewed 300 mobile phone users from their online monitor group.

Demographics

From the 300 respondents, exactly half were of each sex, and exactly one fifth were in each age group from teens to the fifties.

Music playback is heavily promoted on phones, from DoCoMo’s Napster service and au’s LISMO to the forthcoming Apple iPhone, but how exactly are people using their features? For me, my phone is almost permanently in manner mode, and I actually haven’t downloaded any music whatsoever onto my new phone, nor used its SD Card playback feature.
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As my entry for the upcoming Japan Blog Matsuri, this time being hosted by Bill at Rising Sun of Nihon, may I present the latest research from goo Ranking on one of the strange and uniquely Japanese (well, I’ve never heard of such a thing back home at least!) custom of enumerating famous locations, etc, as the Three Great Things. The research for this was conducted between the 18th and 20th of January, but no further demographic information is available. All the sights will be linked to relevant images or web pages, so feel free to click through to see what the fuss is about. However, some of the text may be Japanese if I can’t find a suitable English web page. Note there is also a WikiTravel article on a few of Japan’s Three Greats. Also note that the order they appear doesn’t imply a 1, 2, 3 rank.
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Just today goo Rankings published a new survey, this time looking at what people would be happy about if it were invented within the next 10 years.As usual for goo Rankings, there is no demographic information, just that the fieldwork was conducted between the 22nd and 24th of February this year. In addition, on a similar theme they also asked what people would like to do within the next ten years.

In Q1, I’m very surprised the perhaps more mundane cure for cancer didn’t feature, although I’m not disappointed to see the clichéd flying car making an appearance at number 6. Also, I guess Asimov doesn’t count as a humanoid robot as perhaps people want to see an autonomous android-like device. I’m not really sure what number 10 is, however: perhaps it means you can walk on the ceiling too?

In Q2, the second place mastering one’s hobby does seem rather odd to me.
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With Japanese baby boomers due to start reaching the mandatory retirement age from this April, MyVoice performed a timely survey over the first five days of February looking at this very issue of the baby boom generation.

Demographics

13,304 members of MyVoice’s online community successfully completed a private internet-based survey. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% aged fifty or older.

Japan’s baby boom generation are those born in the immediate post-war times from 1947 to 1949, or 昭和, Showa, 22 to 24 when counting by the Japanese imperial reign-based calendar system.

I must admit to general ignorance on what problems exactly the mass retirement will have, except for accelerating the increase in pensioners, and therefore increasing the amount of money the government needs from me to keep the OAPs in bingo money. I suppose that in itself is as big a problem as it gets, although another reason I’ve heard about from the press is that Japan will lose the generation that made Japan what it is today, although I personally don’t see that as a problem.
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infoPLANT recently released the results of a survey they conducted into the use of convenience stores. Over one week spanning the end of February and the start of March 5,305 users of DoCoMo’s iMode system chose to fill in a questionaire. 34.8% of the sample was male, 65.2% female.

I actually use them fairly infrequently, probably less than once a week, and most often it is to pay bills (you all do know you can pay most if not all utility bills at the major chains, with no extra fee charged?) or pay for tickets ordered online. If I do buy something, it’s more often than not just some bottled water, usually the cheapest in the store.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of goo Research’s 30th regular blog research. This has been carried out every month for the last two and a half years, but this is the very last time they will perform it.

Demographics

Between the 12th and 14th of March 1,073 members of goo Research’s monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.2% of the sample was male, 17.8% in their teens, 19.3% in their twenties, 18.0% in their thirties, 17.2% in their forties, 17.0% in their fifties, and 10.7% aged sixty or more.

Perhaps because this is the last time, there’s a bit more demographic information presented in the results than usual. The reason for stopping this research seems to be that because blogging is now firmly planted in the awareness of internet users, there is little extra to be gained from continuing the research.
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Having looked at rice in January, in February MyVoice moved on to bread. Over the first five days at the start of February 13,232 members of their online community completed a private internet-based questionnaire.

Demographics

46% of the 13,232 people were male, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

I eat bread twice a day; once for breakfast usually with just water and sometimes jam on top; at the moment I have some nice cheap Chivers Ginger and Lime Preserve that we managed to find in an import shop. Lunchtime is also bread from a bakery by work, usually a cheese roll and one or two other breads, often sweet, but sometimes they also have nice rice or even tea rolls.

I am surprised, however, by the quite high frequency of bread eating; I would have thought it might have been lower, but perhaps if we saw the detailed statistics we could learn something by cross-referencing age or sex versus frequency of eating.

Incidentally, Tokyo Times had a recent rather entertaining piece on Japanese bread.
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ITmedia News recently reported on some research by Video Research Interactive into where F1 women (F1 just seems to be the marketing code-word for the women between the ages of 20 to 34) spend their time on the internet. There were two sets of figures recorded; one on which sites had the biggest percentage of F1 women, and which sites had the largest absolute numbers of F1 visitors. The data was collected over an unstated period, but I suspect it was for all of 2006.

It’s perhaps interesting to note that mixi has a significantly high number of young women users. I’m also rather surprised to see Geocities as the seventh overall most popular site in Japan. I thought the US version, at least, was basically dead.
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infoPLANT recently took a look at one of the first things that strikes many visitors to these shores, the interest in and habits surrounding high-class brand-name clothes, accessories and jewelry. Although this research was conducted by infoPLANT’s usual method of a self-selecting call for participants sent out through NTT DoCoMo’s iMode menuing system, the self-selecting nature should not have too averse an effect on the replies, I believe.

Demographics

Over a week between the 20th and 27th of February, 4,989 mobile phone users successfully completed the survey. 34.9% of the group was male, 2.8% were in their teens, 32.8% in their twenties, 43.1% in their thirties, 18.3% in their forties, and 2.9% aged fifty or older.

I don’t think I’ve actually ever bought a posh brand item myself, and the only interest I have in them is ensuring I drag wifey away as quickly as possible whenever she sets her eyes upon them! She used to be quite a bit of a brand freak, but she’s mostly recovered now! As I’ve got small wrists, I can’t even wear the average posh watch without it looking far too chunky, not that I’d want to anyway, as Rolex wearers always gives me the impression of being dodgy second-hand car salesmen.
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