世論 What Japan Thinks

As a sort-of follow-up to one of my more popular recent translations, the emoticons of Japan, let’s have a look at the results of a recent opinion poll reported by japan.internet.com. In the middle of October Cross Marketing Inc interviewed 300 mobile phone mail-using members of its internet monitor pool regarding their use of features like デコメール, deco-mail, available on most of the newer mobile phones that allows the user to send an HTML message with a border or similar template, in-line graphics, selected font colours and sizes, and other decorative features. The demographics of the sample were the usual Cross Marketing equal divisions – half and half male and female, and 20.0% in each of the five age groups from teens to fifties.

Just for the record, KDDI (au and TU-KA) call it デコレーションメール, decoration mail, and SoftBank Mobile’s feature is named アレンジメール, arrange mail. Note that the HTML mail is viewable not just on the models that support its creation, but also on most phones with a built-in browser and even on PCs. Also note that since most people get charged by the packet, there is a considerable expense for both the sender and the receiver.

I’ve not used the feature, so I can’t comment on how good or otherwise it is, but my new phone that I pick up tomorrow does support it, so I’ll have to give it a go.
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It’s been quite a while since I’ve looked at a political opinion poll, so with the recent changes at the top with Junichiro Koizumi being replaced by Shinzo Abe, and with North Korea being a tad unreasonable at the moment, I think this would be a good time to present a translation of a survey of public opinion by the Yomiuri Shimbun on the new cabinet and the recent trip to China and Korea.
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In the middle of September, DIMSDRIVE Research surveyed its monitor pool to find out what they thought regarding the falling birth rate. 7,656 people successfully completed the survey. 42.6% were male, 1.0% in their teens, 16.0% in their twenties, 37.1% in their thirties, 27.8% in their forties, 12.9% in their fifties, and 5.2% aged sixty or older. Sadly there is no information regarding marital status.

I think that the lack of children is the biggest problem facing Japan, and one that needs to be tackled soon before it is too late. While of course Japan is overcrowded and in theory there is nothing wrong with a few less people around, the problem is that the whole population is aging and soon tax from full-time workers will be insufficient to cover pensions.

My own workplace does have decent support for both men and women; both can have up to three years (if I remember correctly) sabbatical for child-raising, and I know of a few women who have taken advantage of this, but as for men, well, for example a colleague’s wife gave birth and he took one whole day off for the day she got out of hospital. “Luckily” the baby was born on a public holiday, but I don’t think he has even decreased his usual working hours (by that I mean four hours overtime a night) since she got out of hospital.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into losing portable electronic equipment. Towards the end of September they interviewed 330 members of their monitor panel by means of a private internet survey. 73.0% were male, 15.2% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 32.1% in their forties, 10.3% in their fifties, and just 0.9% in their sixties.

This survey was probably insired by the recent survey carried out in Europe into losing electronic equipment at airports, which found that a lot of people were willing to just ditch their mobile phone and get a better model through their insurance. With such an insurance scheme being rare in Japan, and with people perhaps more attached to their mobile as a fashion statement rather than as just a tool, if the amount of mascots, stickers and ring tones on even a serious businessman’s phone are anything to go by.
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Having just recently translated surveys on health checks and fitness, let’s visit the other end of the spectrum by looking at a survey from September by MyVoice on fast food. 12,847 members of their internet community completed the private opinion poll; 54% were female, 3% in their teens, 20% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 13% aged fifty or older.

Note that this survey was carried out whilst the importation of US beef was banned, which may very well have adversely affected Yoshinoya’s rating.

My only fast foods are the very occasional Mister Donuts and Subway, each once a year, if even that!
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goo Ranking recently published statistics of the number of outbound links from blogs it manages under the http://blog.goo.ne.jp brand.

This being raw statistics, there’s no sample size, and note that some of the links might be to more than one page within a site, not just the top page.
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goo Research recently published the results of a survey they carried out into exercise, either taking it or watching other people doing it. Demographics are not clearly expressed, but aproximately 1,000 employed people from their monitor pool completed the survey. About eigth-tenths worked full-time for public or private enterprises as either permanent or contract staff, and nearly nine-tenths were salaried employees. Freelancers and self-employed made up the remaining one and a bit tenths.

Exercise is one of these things I mean to do more of, but… There’s no shortage of clubs, but basic fees start at not much less than 10,000 yen per month or about 2,000 yen per visit, which is a bit much.

As for watching, she who owns the remote has no interest, so neither do I…
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With me on a Shinkansen up to Yokohama for the CHES (Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems ’06 Conference rather than attending a regular health check, it would be quite appropriate to look at this survey conducted at the start of last month by MyVoice into health checks. 13,126 people from their monitor pool responded, 54% female, 3% in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 13% aged fifty or older.

In Japan, I believe the law states that all companies must provide their employees with annual health checks, but the law doesn’t state how detailed they should be. In my employer’s case, every year we get our height, weight, urine, eyes and ears checked, and a chest X-ray. I personally opt out of the chest X-ray most times as it’s apparently a check for lung cancer and TB, but according to reliable internet data, there are far more effective tests for latent TB and X-rays should only be needed to confirm an outbreak, and as for lung cancer, first I don’t smoke, and second, once it’s big enough to turn up on an X-ray it’s most likely terminal. Japan also has the highest number of medical X-ray exposures per person per year and the highest rate of cancer attributed to medical X-rays, two facts which I can’t help feel are connected somehow.

My company also once every three to five years does a blood test, poo test, and a barium meal, plus additional ten-year checks, and also recently has started annual fitness tests consisting of grip strength, bike riding, sit-ups, reaction times, balancing on one leg with eyes shut (yes, really!), and recovery rate checks, which is the test I’m skiving out of today.

In addition, many local councils offer their residents various free checks at various stages of life.
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japan.internet.com published the results of an opinion poll conducted by goo Research into online gaming. At the start of October 1,079 members of their monitor panel successfully completed a private internet survey; 44.5% of the sample were male, 2.4% were in their teens, 21.0% in their twenties, 43.5% in their thirties, 23.4% in their forties, and 9.6% in their fifties.

One thing I’m not sure of for this survey is whether online games means just massive multiplayer ones or whether it covers smaller games like first-person shooters, or simple card games through Yahoo! and the like.

I never got into trading as I felt it was a waste of money and felt to me as cheating. I didn’t have too much of a problem with buying gold, but when it felt that there were more people interested in farming items for selling either in-game or outside of the game it lost much of its charm.
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NEPRO Japan recently published the results of a survey that they conducted into mobile phones with GPS functionality. They conducted the respondents by means of an open survey available through the menu systems of the three main phone companies’ web systems, namely DoCoMo’s iMode, Vodafone (now Softbank) live! (which has just changed its name “Yahoo! Keitai”, judging by the advertisements I’ve seen), and au and TU-KA’s EZweb. Over 17 hours during the 7th and 8th of September 3,608 people successfully completed the survey; 58% were female, 2% in their teens, 35% in their twenties, 44% in their thirties, and 19% aged forty or older.

GPS is Global Positioning System, a system for locating where you currently are based on triangulation with satellites. I’ve heard it doesn’t work so well in the shadows of tall buildings or of course underground, so one would think that the use in Japan is rather limited. However, there do seem to be a number of software tools that build around the GPS system, from walking navigation systems to substitutes for car navigation via, of course, keeping track of your children.
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