世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted over three days at the end of August and the start of September by Cross Marketing into mobile phone applications. They interviewed 300 mobile phone users from their monitor group by means of a private internet poll; the group was split 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties and 20.0% in their fifties.

Note that here “application” refers to, in the DoCoMo world, the iAppli, Java-based applications, some of which come preinstalled, and others can be downloaded that provide functionality (or fun) in addition to the basic set of tools. My phone, for instance, came with a shoot’em up game, a dog simulator, TV remote control, a graphical mail application (I think, I can’t work it!) and some sort of IM chat application (but I can’t figure that one out either, though!).
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goo Research recently published the results of a survey of their internet monitor pool on the subject of tobacco. They interviewed 1,076 people by means of a private internet-based questionnaire towards the end of July, but the survey report does not include any demographic breakdown.

Note that although there is no age, occupation or sex breakdown, given goo Research’s monitor pool there should be slightly less than average manual workers, the sort of demographic that has a higher smoking rate, I believe, so the 23.1% of regular smokers should not be extrapolated to the general population. Similarly, most goo surveys have about 55% to 60% women respondents, and women are significantly less likely to smoke (about 15% versus 50%) than men.

One strange thing about cigarettes in Japan is the uniformity of price; prices for a particular brand are the same across all vendors, from cigarette machines to big supermarkets via corner shops. In addition, the price for a case of 10 boxes is not discounted at all, except for them occasionally throwing in a small gift like a lighter or similar trinket. Beer is similar, although you do get discounts for six-packs, but soft drinks often vary in price as one might expect. Is there some law on price-setting?
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goo Ranking released the results of their latest ranking questionnaire, conducted over two days towards the end of August. An unspecified number of goo users replied to the question of what is your lasting impression of the Junichiro Koizumi premiership.

This departs from the usual fluff of these ranking surveys, but I cannot give any guarantee about how accurately the figures reflect true public opinion. As always, the score for each option is the percentage of the votes for the top answer. I’m impressed by Jun-chan’s Elvis impressions making ninth on the list, but disappointed that him dancing with his doppelganger Richard Gere didn’t get anywhere!

Additionally, I suspect that anything directly related to him backing Horiemon’s election campaigning was disallowed due to the ongoing court case.
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Recently goo Research carried out research into awareness of product and service safety issues. They interviewed 1,064 consumers by means of a web-based questionnaire, but details of the demographics of this sample were not reported.

Product and service safety has recently become a big issue in Japan, but quite frankly blown out of all proportion by the media. First of all there was the truely problematic Aneha scandal of blocks of flats and hotels not being built according to the building codes, thus liable to collapse even in moderately strong earthquakes. Next up was US beef, blown up out of all proportion, especially considering that not many people in Japan worry about (or even know about) the human growth hormones and antibiotics that are far more likely to aversely affect your health compared to BSE or vCGD, let alone the heavy metals in Japanese fish or the second-hand smoke in the average Japanese restaurant. Later was Schindler’s Lifts, which, as the linked story suggests, the brouhaha was caused as much by the company’s failure to appear sorry enough as by the death from the hardware failure itself. Note that at the end of August a man died after falling into an empty lift shaft, but this got very little press coverage and no mention of the make of the faulty equipment, at least in the linked story, so I would put good money on it not being one of Schindler’s.

I have also omitted mention of bits falling off planes or trains crashing or poison fan heaters or…

Oh, and the title of this story, “Safety Japan” comes from a common Japanese English mistake of using “safety” instead of “safe”, as in the other stereotypical “I am safety driver” expression.
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The big news in Japan right now is, of course, the birth of a potential future Emperor. This story will spawn a million conspiracy theories, no doubt, from was it a natural conception, to, well, I don’t know how far these wild tales will go! The exclusively male lineage of the Japanese royal family is also causing the Western press to have a look at the role of women in Japanese society as a whole, so as a service to my newer readers, or those discovering the blog through search engines, I’d like to point out I have translated a number of surveys on gender issues, covering many aspects of society from women in the workplace to domestic violence.

This rather buzzword-overloaded title refers to the results of a survey at the start of this month by goo Research, published by japan.internet.com, on spreading memes, or baton touching, to use the Japanese-English terminology; baton is the meme, touching is the spreading of it. 1,092 members of their monitor pool successfully completed an internet-based private poll; 56.8% of the sample was female, 2.4% in their teens, 21.9% in their twenties, 46.3% in their thirties, and 29.4% in their forties,

Here the meme is the creation and spreading of a set of questions through the blogosphere (uggh, buzzword overload!); you get tagged by someone, answer a set of questions on a theme in a post to your blog, ending by selecting five more victims to take their turn in answering, as in this, the first English example I could find through Google, or this, a Japanese blog dedicated to passing the baton. “Baton touch” is, as indicated, yet another Japanese-English phrase, just in case you are confused by it, where we would probably use “baton pass” instead in English. Apparently if you pop onto mixi and search for バトン, baton, you can find no end of them to join in with.

Note that apparently this baton passing is also being used for PR campaigns, and for CGM, Consumer Generated Media, but as to what form this takes, I am yet to learn.
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japan.internet.com today published the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research into podcasting. They interviewed 331 people from their monitor pool, 87.6% male, employed in private or public enterprises. 7.3% were in their twenties, 39.9% in their thirties, 36.3% in their forties, 13.9% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.

I would be in the ex-users category, myself; even though this blog has been featured on three podcasts, the latest of them being Japundit’s podcast, Japan Talk, I have to admit I’ve not listened to the last two, and I in fact ditched my Sony hard disk player recently, but Panasonic’s recent announcement of their SD800N digital audio player with noise-cancelling headphones I could perhaps be persuaded to try again.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey by Cross Marketing Inc into how people check the time. They interviewed 300 mobile phone users from their internet monitor group at the end of August, 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

You may remember a previous survey about two months ago where it was reported that about 40% of Japanese use their mobile phones as their main alarm clock. I also rarely wear a wristwatch, prefering to peek at my mobile for the time checks. It’s not quite as convenient as a watch, but a watch just gets in the way when I’m typing, I feel.
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As another part of their 91st Ranking Research, DIMSDRIVE Research looked at what people thought was the cause of their bad eyesight. We’ve seen previously how most Japanese wear glasses, so let’s have a look at why they do. No, that reason was not included in the answers! They interviewed 4,347 people (perhaps all thought their eyesight was bad) from their internet monitor group over a period of a week in the middle of August.

The main reason my eyes are wonky, I suspect, is as a child I spent a lot of time staring at the sun.
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japan.internet.com published the results of goo Research’s 27th regular monthly survey into mobile phone upgrade needs. Over four days towards the end of August 1,000 mobile phone owners from their monitor group successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 55.3% of the group was female, 2.3% in their teens, 20.7% in their twenties, 42.0% in their thirties, 23.3% in their forties, and 11.7% aged fifty or more. I believe people were asked about their own personal phone rather than company equipment.

The almost zero interest in foreign phones (if we discount Sony-Ericsson) is both quite surprising and rather predictable to me. The design aesthetic of Western phones is quite different to the Japanese; fat stubby bricks versus thin rounded clamshells, to attempt to sum up the differences in a single phrase. Samsung is Korean, however, as might Pantech be (I’ve never heard of them before!), but I wonder if their non-existent sales is related more to poor model appeal rather than to nationalistic sympathies. Japanese phones do really poorly overseas (discounting Sony-Ericsson again) so perhaps the reasons are similar for both imports and exports?
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