世論 What Japan Thinks

At the start of this month MyVoice conducted a survey into functional sweets and other confectionaries. 13,384 people from their monitor group successfully completed a private online survey. 54% of the sample was female, 3% in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

I chew xylitol-based gum every night after dinner, but was surprised to see how few others were daily consumers. My wife did try the chocolate diet with no success, however. The argument is that cacao-rich chocolate (75% or more) has very little sugar but lots of fibre, plus the caffine boost might have something to do with raising your metabolic rate. However, you are only supposed to eat 20 grams or so after each meal, and the high levels of caffine and other constituents can seriously adversely affect a significant percentage of the population, so I cannot recommend it to anyone.
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DIMSDRIVE Research recently published as part of their 103rd Ranking Research the results of a questionnaire to discover what people envied about the opposite sex. Over a week in mid-November 2,373 men and 2,334 women from their monitor group supplied their answers.

This appears to be just a fun, perhaps even silly, question, but when you look at the answers you see a lot of honest, even bitter, opinions on how people view the opposite sex. It’s also interesting how women envy men because men don’t need to do the things the men envy in women. (I don’t think that makes much sense…)
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by goo Research into Wikipedia usage. 1,088 members of their monitor panel successfully completed the internet-based opinion poll. 47.1% of the sample was male, 20.9% in their twenties, 41.8% in their thirties, 26.5% in their forties, and 10.8% in their fifties.

This month, Japanese Wikipedia was chosen as the overall grand prize winner in the “WEB of the Year 2006″ (Japanese link) awards. In addition, on the 15th of this month it crossed the 300,000 article mark.

With Wikipedia, if I am looking up a simple fact I know I can most likely trust the article, but for not just anything remotely controversial but also others that require specialised knowledge I find myself often wondering if it is correct or not, and end up doing my own research to corraborate the data! Having said all that, I did refer today to two articles which referred to current events and I was pleased to find information that I found useful and trustworthy. On the other hand, did I find it trustworthy just because the information supported my stance on the matters concerned?
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With お歳暮, oseibo, the end of year gift-giving season upon us, perhaps you need to send a present to someone and don’t know what is best? Not to worry, goo Rankings recently published the top 30 edible Oseibo gifts people would be happy to receive. As usual, we just have a ranking as a relative number of votes for each gift.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on goo Research’s fourth regular Social Networking Service (SNS) survey, conducted at the start of December amongst 1,093 members of their internet monitor pool. 54.2% of the respondents were female, 2.4% in their teens, 21.7% in their twenties, 38.5% in their thirties, 24.2% in their forties, 9.8% in their fifties, and 3.5% aged sixty or older.

It’s interesting to notice the distinct (but predictable) split in the sexes in Q1SQ2 – women use SNSs primarily to communicate, men use it for finding others who share their hobbies.

Oh, and I’m still to use the invitation to mixi I got sent by one of my readers perhaps over six months ago…
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With the New Year soon to be upon us, infoPLANT took a look at the subject of drinking during the end of the year holidays. The data provided below is part of a 15 question survey available for purchase from their web site. For the survey, 800 internet users completed a web-based survey over the first two days in December. The sample was equally split 50:50 male and female, and 25:25:25:25 in each age group from the twenties to the fifties and older.

This promised to be an interesting survey, but turned out to be rather dull once I started translating it. Might as well post it, however, but aplogies in advance!
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As part of their 104th Ranking Research, DIMSDRIVE Research asked 5,003 members of its monitor group why it was good that they were born Japanese. This poll was conducted towards the end of November.

When I first read this I laughed out loud at the item ranked second, and I think everyone else who has lived in Japan will raise at least a wry smile when they see probably the most groan-worthy stereotypical nihonjinron-like answer.

If I had to choose the top reasons why I’m happy that I was born Scottish, I’d probably choose the Scottish socialistic (with a small ‘s’) character, the great outdoors, our football team that can inspire both laughter and tears, something to do with our culture and heritage, and, of course, that I wasn’t born English.
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[part 1] [part 2]

With the Christmas present season upon us and New Year sales soon to come, DIMSDRIVE Research took a timely look at ownership of portable games machine. Over a week in the middle of November 7,508 people from their monitor group successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 44.8% of the sample was male, 64.9% married, and 51.7% had children. By age, 1.1% were in their teens, 16.6% in their twenties, 37.1% in their thirties, 27.7% in their forties, 12.7% in their forties, and 4.8% aged sixty or older.

Talking of wireless, when I visited the Pokemon Centre in central Osaka recently there was an awful lot of people sitting around outside playing on their Nintendo DSes, presumably with whoever was around.

Note that the survey was conducted before the release of either the PS3 or the Wii, so for the last question, no-one already owns either of the machines.
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[part 1] [part 2]

With the Christmas present season upon us and New Year sales soon to come, DIMSDRIVE Research took a timely look at ownership of portable games machine. Over a week in the middle of November 7,508 people from their monitor group successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 44.8% of the sample was male, 64.9% married, and 51.7% had children. By age, 1.1% were in their teens, 16.6% in their twenties, 37.1% in their thirties, 27.7% in their forties, 12.7% in their forties, and 4.8% aged sixty or older.

The fad for brain training amongst the elderly is still apparent in this survey, although one must remember that since this poll is conducted amongst people who are internet users, and since internet use is presumably lower amongst the elderly, it would be foolish to draw too many conclusions about the whole over-fifty age group from the results presented here.

Looking at Q4A, there is perhaps the suggestion that people are using the PSP as not just a games machine, but also as a music or video player when they are out and about.
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japan.internet.com today published the results of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the trendy buzzwords of 2006. 330 members of their monitor pool employed in public or private enterprises completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 79.1% were male, 17.9% in their twenties, 44.5% in their thirties, 26.7% in their forties, 9.7% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their sixties.

I read today on Gen Kanai’s blog that Joi Ito has just been appointed chairman of Creative Commons, so with Creative Commons being the most confusing of the words for the Japanese, this survey suggests one issue he may need to approach.

Note that most of the words have come into Japanese either using the English spelling or transliterated into katakana, so that makes it harder for the average person to figure out the meaning. The only one meriting a translation is 集合知, shuugouchi, Wisdom of Crowds, the term that describes Web Two-Point-Zero sites like for instance digg, where the theory goes that the masses will ensure that the most interesting stories will naturally get promoted up to the top of the pile. As one could probably predict, however, the stories that make the front page tend to be those promoted by the top users, and those that attract their attention more often than not are “Top [Ten/Twenty/100] [Tips/Tools/Downloads] for [Linux/Photoshop/iPod]“.
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