世論 What Japan Thinks

The headline may very well be true, but as part of DIMSDRIVE’s 90th Research Ranking survey, they asked people what they thought the best free things in life were.

I have to pretty much agree with the rankings below; the mottainai part of me wants to disagree with the supermarket carrier bag option, but they always get reused at home as rubbish bags.

One might think that libraries are rather low in the list for a country that seems to like reading so much; perhaps two reasons are that many people buy their paperbacks either new or used, and that libraries don’t tend to stock much manga!

I think the “free newspapers” and “coupon magazines” have a lot of overlap as many free newspapers have coupons as a major part, and the quality of the articles leave a lot to be desired, but there are some exceptions, of course. Not that I’m biased for them plugging me, oh no…
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research into the use of マンガ喫茶, Manga kissa, or comic cafes. They interviewd 330 people from their monitor pool, 60.6% male, 1.5% in their teens, 17.6% in their twenties, 33.6% in their thirties. 25.5% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 7.6% in their sixties.

Manga cafes are to be found all over the big cities, many offering very cheap prices (if you don’t overstay your welcome) for access to not just their huge stack of comics and magazines, but also computers, showers, DVDs, and even private cubicles for one or two, if you’re after a cheap and private location for a date.

Q1: Have you ever used a manga cafe? (Sample size=330)

Yes (to Q2)	43.0%
No, but I know what they are	54.2%
Don’t know what they are	2.7%

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Over six days at the end of June DIMSDRIVE Research looked at what people thought about the two key features of the Japanese summer, namely the rainy season and typhoons. 3,198 people from their monitor group completed a private internet-based survey; 53.6% of the sample was female, 2.4% in their teens, 16.6% in their twenties, 34.0% in their thirties, 25.5% in their forties, 12.3% in their fifties and 9.2% in their sixties.

I suppose the overall results of this survey are only notable in their predictability that people dislike bad weather! I too dislike the rainy season, but I’ve been lucky enough to avoid most typhoons; there was one dangerous one two years ago that nearly flooded a river rather too close to my flat, but other than that, back home a good Atlantic gale is much more ferocious than the average, or even the stronger than average typhoons that blow over Japan.
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For lots, lots more Japanese text emoticons and facemarks, be sure to check out Evoticon.net!

In the middle of June, goo Ranking surveyed its readers by means of a public internet questionnaire on what emoticons, or smilies, they often used in mail from their personal computers. The following table presents the top thirty emoticons list. As usual for goo Ranking, number one slot gets ranked with 100 points, and all the rest with the proportion of votes relative to the top vote. More detailed demographics, etc, are not available.

Back in April, I translated another survey on the use of smilies, or emoticons, on Japanese mobile phones, that you may want to reference. Even though the people responding to this survey are (supposed to be!) adult, emoticons reveal a cute childish playfulness, I feel.

Please feel free to use these in your email or messenger applications to add some japanese emotions to your chat!
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goo Research recently published a massive survey of 35,925 internet users by means of a public internet-based questionnaire on the use of railway IC cards. They collected replies during a week at the end of June and the start of July. 53.3% of the respondents were female, 2.3% in their teens, 22.3% in their twenties, 39.6% in their thirties, 24.0% in their forties, 8.7% in their fifties, 2.3% in their sixties, 0.6% in their seventies, and the remaining 0.2% chose not to reveal their age. Also, 30.6% of the sample lived in the Tokyo area, 7.4% in the Nagoya area, and 16.6% in Kansai – Tokyo and Kansai have railway smart card services (namely JR’s SUICA in Tokyo and JR’s ICOCA and the private railways’ PiTaPa in Kansai) and major train concentrations, but I don’t believe Nagoya has, although it is the third major centre of population in Japan. According to the survey, though, there is plans to launch a JR TOICA card for the Nagoya area.

For those of you not familiar with their operation, here is a quick history of the cards in the Kansai area. First, JR launched the ICOCA card with two key features; one, a pre-paid season ticket and two, electronic cash, whereby money could be added manually then used either for shopping around the station or to use instead of train tickets for travel outside the season ticket’s area. A couple of years later the private railways launched the PiTaPa system, which had a quite different payment model. First, there was no season ticket, but instead between two nominated stations you got a 5% discount for each journey in your first month, rising to 15% for the third, if I remember correctly. These fares were post-pay; at the end of each month all your travel was added up and automatically withdrawn from a nominated account. For purchases other than train fares, there was also a standard electronic wallet system as for ICOCA. In addition, if you chose a credit card version of your PiTaPa card, when your available cash fell below a certain point, the card could be set to automatically recharge itself as you passed through the ticket gates. Note that although there are about seven or eight transport companies that support PiTaPa, when using another company’s transport your fares come from the electronic cash portion, and no discounts are available. This makes it a major pain for people like me who use two private railways and JR to get to work, as I would need to carry three separate cards, probably in three separate wallets to avoid interference, to get full benefit from the discounts.

In the meantime, JR announced their Smart ICOCA, which was an ICOCA card and credit card combined, with the similar auto top-up feature. In addition, ICOCA and PiTaPa got together and now allow the electronic cash to be used at each other’s ticket gates. Finally, Hankyu have just started a pre-pay system for season tickets (just like the original ICOCA), so holders of their Hana Plus PiTaPa-compatible credit cards can add a season ticket to their card, for people who’d rather manage their commuting fares that way round.

I almost forgot – the latest DoCoMo FOMA mobile phones also support some aspects of railway IC cards’ electronic cash system, but I’m not really sure of the exact capabilities.

Note also that the Tokyo JR SUICA cards can be used in the Kansai ICOCA area and vice versa. I’m not sure whether or not SUICA and PiTaPa interact, though.
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On their phones, I hasten to add. japan.internet.com published this much less interesting than it seems fact as part of its report on a survey by Cross Marketing Inc into the use of paid contents on mobile phones. They interviewed 300 mobile phone users by means of a private internet survey; exactly half of the sample was male, and 20.0% were in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

I personally only use the buzzer in manner mode, but my phone is in such a mode all day most days. Ah, I’d better explain that manner mode is a 和製英語, wasei eigo, or Japanese-English expression that means silent mode, turning off all audible ringers. A pet hate of mine is people who leave the keyboard beep on!

Q1: At what volume do you usually set your ring tones to? (Sample size=300)

Maximum volume	17.0%
High volume	18.3%
Medium volume	31.7%
Low volume	14.0%
Silent mode	17.7%
Step-up volume	1.3%
Step-down volume	0.0%

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japan.internet.com released the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research conducted on the first of August into opinions on Smartphones. They interviewed 331 members of their monitor group, 58.3% male, by means of a private internet survey. 13.9% were in their twenties, 36.3% in their thirties, 29.3% in their forties, 13.0% in their fifties, and 7.6% in their sixties. Note that JR Tokai Express Research’s monitor group seems to have a disproportionately high number of business people, so the results should be read in that light, so the knowledge and usage of Smartphones and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) is probably higher than in a truely random sample.

Despite, or more likely because, standard phones in Japan having very high specification level, the market for Smartphones seems very limited. There have been a few models released, but they have a niche market and are rarely promoted in the high street shops. I’m surprised a full QWERTY keyboard came so low in the ranking, but perhaps people were imagining that only pinkie-sized could be squeezed into a mobile. However, I still have fond memories of my Psion Series 5 (I lost it in Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam) and its amazing mini keyboard. Something like that with BlueTooth support for a voice headset would be wonderful. Anyone know where to buy a second-hand Psion in Japan?
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japan.internet.com published the results of a survey by goo Research into the use of web site passwords carried out at the start of this month. 1,091 members of goo’s research monitor group successfully completed the private web-based questionnaire. 56.7% of the sample was female, and 20.3% were in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 24.5% in their forties, 10.2% in their fifties, and 3.6% in their sixties.

The stunning figure is that 266 people, or 24.4%, admitted to using a password identical to their user name, if allowed by the web site. 43.4% said they wrote it down, which arguably can be better than memorising a simpler one, although no questions were asked in this survey on how complex passwords were.

This survey highlights perhaps two possible approaches to hacking in addition to the headline’s method of using the same user name and password. Another would be a phishing attack, but one that on password entry presented a password error. Since almost half the people say they repeatedly guess at the password, this type of fake site might yield multiple passwords for various sites. Finally, an attack that I have never heard of, but seems ridiculously simple for such situations as online game bulletin boards for competing clans, where, by means of a backdoor into the password routines, one can extract user names and passwords which can then be used for whatever purposes, once you track down the places that that user frequents.

Back on the subject of personal password management, I once tried using a password management tool, but it was excessively cryptic and after entering two or three passwords I forgot exactly how to go about entering a master password, and couldn’t recover from the situation, so I had to delete the tool!

I can’t find a similar survey of passwords from other countries, but if anyone can provide a link, it would make a useful comparison.
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japan.internet.com published the results of a survey by Cross Marketing Inc into pay contents for mobile phones. At the end of July they interviewed 300 people from their internet monitor group. As usual for Cross Marketing, the sample was evenly split, 50:50 male and female, and a fifth aged 18 or 19, a fifth in their twenties, and so on up to a fifth of the sample aged between 50 and 59.

The authors suggest that a key reason for people not paying very much, if at all, for mobile contents is due to the ability now to be able to surf the internet and discover lots of free content. However, to me this ignores certain obstacles like the quality of browsers and the lack of sites designed for mobiles. In addition, the most popular option, downloading ring tones, has recently become much cheaper, with lots of 100 yen (plus 5 yen tax) per month all-you-can-download sites getting heavy television promotion.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey by goo Research into podcasting. Over three days at the end of July they interviewed 1,046 members of their internet monitor group. 55.2% of the respondents were female, 23.3% were in their twenties, 39.0% in their thirties, 26.0% in their forties, and 11.7% in their fifties.

It seems to me that podcasting has been replaced by YouTube as the in-vogue buzzword. The last podcast I downloaded (no link as I wouldn’t want to subject you to it too) was a personal “audio postcard from Japan”-kind of recording, but oh dear! Never again will I go near that style of podcast – the lack of a usable fast-forward that duplicates aurally the visual scanning of headlines sapped up all my enthusiasm for the medium and the whiny gaijin content turned me right off the person.
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