世論 What Japan Thinks

Over the first five days at the start of February, MyVoice asked their online monitor group about exercise.

Demographics

13,158 people successfully completed the online questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

Note that walking in Q1 implies walking for the sake of exercise, not just walking through the station or on the way to work, unless it is deliberately for exercise, although the exact dividing line is unclear and up to the individual to choose. I must admit to being in the couch potato class; indeed recently due to changing the line I commute by, I’ve eliminated a 10 minute walk between home and the station. Plans to join a gym last Autumn were never realised.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into server operating systems in small and medium-sized businesses. On the 10th of March 330 people employed in companies with less than 100 people, working in management, board-level, sales, technical or other specialist positions completed the survey. It may be worth comparing the results here with a previous survey on desktop operating systems.

Demographics

86.4% of the sample was male, 5.2% in their twenties, 39.1% in their thirties, 41.8% in their forties, 8.8% in their fifties, and 5.2% in their sixties.

Being in a large company, I don’t count for this survey, although our intranet seems to be powered by some sort of Linux-based system, I suspect. Within each team, however, file servers tend to be Windows; no-one is terribly interested in setting up anything more advanced, and in fact… ahh, perhaps I might get into company confidential information, so I’d better stop now.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey with a slightly odd topic conducted by goo Research regarding receiving mail from MAILER-DAEMON. Just in case you are wondering what this is, legitimate replies from the legitimate MAILER-DEMON means that mail counldn’t be delivered, but often spam or viruses use fake MAILER-DEMON messages to try to get past filters.

Demographics

Between the 9th and 11th of March, 1,072 members of the goo Research monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.8% of the sample were male, 25.3% in their twenties, 23.0% in their thirties, 22.4% in their forties, 21.4% in their fifties, and 8.0% in their sixties.

In Q1SQ3 about three in five read MAILER-DAEMON messages at least some of the time, yet it is one of the vectors of spam and viruses. Note that for some reason most Japanese MAILER-DAEMONs speak in English, and only very rarely does Japanese feature, even in my employer’s internal system, even though it seems like all you need to do is to provide a simple template file for the new error message, in the case of Postfix at least. Does it incorrectly handle Japanese and other double-byte characters, I wonder?
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Just in case you missed their podcast, I’d just like to remind you of another great post by the guys at TPR. This one looks at the facts and myths regarding suicide in Japan, and reveals, to my surprise, that Japan is not an outlier in the worldwide figures. I strongly recommend you pay them a visit, and if you haven’t already, please listen to the content in the archives; I’m not a podcast fan at all, in fact these guys are the only people I listen to, and I always try to catch every episode they do.

Watching my favourite television program tonight, Bakushou Mondai’s Hiraku Oota “If I were Prime Minister”, they did a quick street poll amongst 100 typical Shibuya high school schoolgirls to see how well they recognised the faces of the current and the previous Prime Ministers of Japan. only 44 out of 100 could get Abe san’s first and last names correct, yet 94 out of 100 remembered Jun chan.

To coincide with the first anniversary of the release of Nintendo’s DS Lite handheld console in Japan on March 2nd 2006, japan.internet.com published the results of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into portable gaming, although this report focuses on the DS Lite only.

Demographics

330 people from JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor group completed the survey conducted over four days between the 7th and 10th of March.52.4% of the sample was male, 24.2% in their twenties, 45.5% in their thirties, 21.8% in their forties, 6.7% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.

I still haven’t bought my DS sadly. I suppose I could use the excuse that it’s always sold out whenever I go to the shops, but the truth be told I’m a little scared to buy just in case I get addicted and start ignoring this blog!
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Over the first five days at the start of February, MyVoice asked their online monitor group about earthquakes.

Demographics

13,145 people successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

I’ve not (yet..) experienced a destructive earthquake, although living in the Kansai area I’ve heard lots of stories of the hardships resulting from the Great Hanshin-Akashi Earthquake of 1995. I’ve also visited the Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution (earthquake museum) in Kobe which has an extremely powerful recreation of the scenes during and after the earthquake. There is also a reference library there, which includes maps of all the active faults in Japan – the chances are probably rather high that your home too may be sitting rather close to a fault line. They also have survivors of the earthquake presenting various earthquake-related issues, from describing ground liquification to discussing emergency evacuation kit preparation, with translators on-hand to help out if need be.

Since I get a bit of traffic searching for it, I think I should explain the Japanese 震度, Shindo earthquake scale. Rather than report the magnitude as the key measure of the strengh of the tremor as in the Richter scale, the Shindo scale is used to present a more subjective, and more useful to the people affected by it, evaluation of the effects of the quake. The Shindo measures how one might actually experience the shake. 1 or 2 are barely perceptable wobbles, 3 is dishes rattling, 4 wakes you up and some things might dance off tabletops (this is about as high as I’ve experienced), 5弱, jaku, lower is books popping out of shelves, most things falling over, and perhaps a few cracks in cheaply built houses, 5強, kyou, upper is televisions and wardrobes (and perhaps you too) toppling, deformed doors and structural damage, 6弱, jaku, lower is dancing bookcases, 6強, kyou, upper is nearly everything breaking and falling over, and finally 7 is OH MY GOD WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into digital cameras. Over the 21st and 22nd of February they interviewed 300 people from their internet monitor group by means of a private questionnaire.

Demographics

As usual for Cross Marketing, the sample was 50:50 male and female, and 20:20:20:20:20 of teenagers, people in their twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties.

Just last weekend I bought a new camera, a Panasonic DMC-FS1 LS1. Yes, in that pictured pink! I haven’t got round to opening it, but I had to get a new one after dropping the old one a couple of weeks ago due to me getting zapped by static electricity when getting it passed from wifey, knocking the lens extension motor out of kilter when it landed on the ground.

I print infrequently, and save the photos to the hard disk. I think the option of saving to removable media implies moving the photos to DVD or CD as soon as possible, rather than just using external media as a back-up for the hard disk.
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Continuing on the movie theme, last week japan.internet.com published the results of research conducted by goo Research into cinema ticket buying habits. I would love to find a web site that allows you to buy tickets at a discount, but such a site doesn’t seem to exist. Does anyone know of a good one?

Demographics

1,064 members of goo Research’s online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.1% of the sample was male, 23.3% in their twenties, 22.3% in their thirties, 22.5% in their forties, 21.3% in their fifties, and 10.6% in their sixties.

It may be interesting to cross-reference the results here with the recent MyVoice survey I published yesterday on cinema attendance.
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I spotted this report of a survey on the top 10 photo locations in Japan (or did they mean Tokyo only?) as chosen by 100 tourists randomly stopped in the Tokyo streets.

The article, sadly, is missing photographs of said items, although a quick Google Images search should show you the missing items; in fact, as a public service, here goes:

10. Tsukiji Fish Market
9. Kimono
8. Japanese street signs
7. Mt. Fuji
6. Vending machines
5. Narita Airport
4. Shibuya Crossing
3. Asahi Beer Headquarters
2. Tokyo Imperial Palace
1. Kaminari-mon.