世論 What Japan Thinks

Last month japan.internet.com reported on the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research into mail client software. They interviewed 330 people from their monitor pool employed in public or private enterprises. 80.6% of the sample was male, 9.4% in their twenties, 45.8% in their thirties, 34.2% in their forties, 9.4% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their sixties.

Not suprisingly, Microsoft rules the roost here, as it does with browsers too. I’m a Becky! user myself at both home and at work; Becky! is, in fact, the recommended work mailer as the Outlook family is prone to be a vector for viruses.
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted over three days from the 25th to 27th of October, just after MNP, mobile number portability, was introduced, by Cross Marketing Inc into mobile phone bills. They interviewed 300 mobile phone users from their monitor group by means of a private internet opinion poll. The ratio of male to female was exactly 50:50, and exactly a fifth in each of the age bands from teens to ages 50 to 59.

In Q2 I wonder how to interpret the figure for those on data plan discounts. For the talk plan discounts one example given was the Softbank Love Teigaku (fixed price), where for 300 yen per month you can have unlimited voice calls to one other user, so I don’t know if for data plans it was people on unlimited use data packets rather than, for example, DoCoMo’s packet back scheme, which gives you a number of free packets then all extra packets at fractions of the standard price, from one-third to one-twentieth of the normal cost, if I remember correctly.
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japan.internet.com reported on an opinion poll conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the use of dictionaries. 331 members of their internet monitor pool successfully completed the survey, with 61.3% of the group male, 16.9% in their twenties, 41.7% in their thirties, 28.1% in their forties, 9.7% in their fifties, and 3.6% in their sixties.

It may be useful to reference a previously-translated survey on electronic dictionaries. I’m surprised that ALC didn’t make it into the list as it seems rather a popular destination for the people in my office, for instance.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey by goo Research into web site navigation issues. At the end of October they interviewed 1,093 members of their montior group with five or more years of internet experience by means of a private internet-based survey. 50.05% were male (interestingly, lower than the usual goo monitor ratio of closer to 60%), with 19.0% in their twenties, 44.2% in their thirties, 26.4% in their forties, and 10.4% in their fifties.

Regarding scrolling left and right, I recently got a new mouse with a scroll wheel that goes left and right as well as up and down. However, I can’t say I’ve actually ever remembered to use the left-right feature, and in fact it causes more trouble than it’s worth as a wheel-click in my Opera browser opens a link in a new window, but it’s too easy to accidentally push the wheel to the right at the same time, causing Opera not to recognise my click.
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MyVoice conducted a number of surveys of their internet community at the start of October, and one of these was on the subject of delivery food. 12,313 members successfully completed the questionnaire, with 54% of the respondents female, 2% in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 41% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

One surprising omission from Q2 is that great Kansai staple, okonomiyaki. When I used to regularly visit one shop (now sadly closed down), they’d always be two or three orders for delivery processed whilst I was eating.

Talking of okonomiyaki, I was watching some English language educational program on NHK a few months ago, and in their random foreigner talking on the topic of the lesson segment, they had a guy walking to work in Tokyo, telling us how he passed down a street with restaurants selling local Edo delicacies like the aforementioned okonomiyaki. NHK must have deliberately left that in to entertain the locals by laughing at the ignorant foreigner.
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japan.internet.com reported that in the middle of October JR Tokai Express Research interviewed 330 people from its monitor panel on the matter of usage of bulletin board sites. Of the sample, 74.8% were male, 14.8% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 30.3% in their forties, 12.1% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties. Note that one of the features of JR Tokai’s monitor pool is that they have a large percentage of business men, due in part to the fact that completing these surveys awards points for discounts on the Bullet Train.

2 Channel is a cess pit, quite frankly. I’ve visited there a few times myself, but the combination of heavy slang, both ordinary slang and 2-chan specifics, the general level of vitreol that anonymity promotes, and the utter ugliness of the layout makes me soon give up in disgust.
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With number portability just starting out, and with Softbank’s computer system melting down from the overload of new customers thanks to their, in my opinion, suicidal new pricing scheme (although the small print needs to be carefully read) it may be interesting to look at a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research over four days from the 20th to 23rd of October, just before the new system was introduced, into what mobile phones from each of the three main providers people desire. They interviewed 330 people from their internet monitor group, 67.3% male, 15.5% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 32.1% in their forties, 9.7% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties.

Even although Softbank offer to honour all transferring customers’ loyalty discounts (we get about 30% to 40% off for ours), I do have a dislike of Yahoo!, and I don’t think these special offers will last that long.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into New Year postcards. They got 300 valid responses to their private internet-based survey from their monitor pool; exactly half were male, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, and so on up to 20.0% in their fifties.

New Year postcards are even more required than Christmas cards were back home, so this good showing by PCs and mobiles is quite surprising for me. I will look out for another survey that might indicate to whom people plan to send the virtual and real greetings to see if there is any pigeon-holing of contacts.

It’s getting time to decide on our New Year postcards; although we usually do most communication by email, there’s something tangible about a real 年賀状はがき, nengajou hagaki, New Year postcard that electronics just can’t replace. We will order the front design from some internet site, most likely, and do the addressing by specialist New Year postcard software.

For your information, next year is the Year of the 亥, inoshishi, or wild boar.
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If you thought yesterday’s survey was a strange thing to ask about, here’s an even odder one – goo Ranking on one’s favourite cloud. As usual for goo Rankings, there is no demographic information, and the top-scoring costume gets 100 points and all the rest get rates as a percentage of the top rank. This survey was also conducted over a three day period towards the end of September.

Just in case you’re not familiar with the term contrails, it means the condensation trail left behind jet aircrafts, but is also the source of many chemtrail conspiracy theories (warning – secure tinfoil hat before clicking link).

In addition, the auspicious clouds answer includes, I believe, the popular Japanese folk belief that earthquakes are preceded by very red clouds at sunset.

Living in Japan, one would, however, get the impression that the favourite clouds are from the fog of cigarette smoke. My personal favourite is my tag cloud.
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goo Ranking published today the results of one of their ranking surveys into what costumes people would like to try on in private, for both men and women. As usual for goo Rankings, there is no demographic information, and the top-scoring costume gets 100 points and all the rest get rates as a percentage of the top rank. Both surveys were conducted over a three day period towards the end of September.

Note that for some of the costumes it does not specify if it is male or female, such as for the women selecting Harry Potter; whether it is Harry himself they want to dress up as or as Hermione is not clear. However, I feel it is safe to assume that cross-dressing in private is a popular desire.

I’ve also linked a few of the costumes to work-safe material, so don’t worry too much about clicking on the links.

Finally, despite evidence to the contrary, dressing up in a kilt (outside of schoolgirl uniforms, perhaps) was not popular.
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