世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently reported on JR Tokai Express Research’s survey into bookmarking habits. Towards the end of July they interviewed 331 internet users from their monitor group: 67.4% were male, 13.6% in their twenties, 35.3% in their thirties, 35.0% in their forties, 12.1% in their fifties, and 3.9% in their sixties.

This is an interesting set of questions, although I would have also liked to have seen Q1 as a multiple answer question. For Q3, I’d like to say I use an RSS reader, but only low-traffic sites (up to four or five new items per day) get into my reader; any more and I feel I would rather just use my bookmarks so I can scan headlines faster and easier. Incidentally, just less than half of the Japanese survey sites I regularly scan offer an RSS feed for their updates, which is a bit of a pain.
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Over four days in early March (sorry, but they are always slow to report) Central Research Services, Inc carried out a survey on views on pets. 2,000 people throughout the country aged 20 or over were randomly selected for face-to-face interviews; just over two-thirds, or 1,341 agreed to participate. The same questions had also been asked in other surveys carried out in 1999, 2000, 2002 and 2005.

Pet ownership is yet another of the facets of Japanese society that we foreigners find hard to understand. Whilst this survey does highlight some of the things that seem strange to me, sadly it does not explain them. In reference to the headline, a few years ago there was a huge boom in Chiuwawa sales thanks mostly to a series of adverts for high interest loans, with some other adverts following suit. One that particularly sticks in my mind was for a product I forgot, but the daughter was moving out to her own place, and you saw her coming in with her newly-bought puppy only to find the parents already waiting with another one. Oh, how they laughed!
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japan.internet.com recently reported on research by Cross Marketing Inc regarding people’s views on restaurant search web sites. They interviewed 320 people who had used a restaurant search site by means of a private internet questionnaire; half of the sample were male, and a quarter in each of the age groups of their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties.

This particular segment of the market seems to have assumed the title グルメ, gurume, the Japanese transliteration of gourmet (actually from the French, not English), which is the reason that a number of the web sites listed below start with Guru-.

In my experience, Guru-Navi seems the first stop for most of the people I know; one benefit of the site is that many of the listed restaurants also have discount coupons available for printing out.
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Just over a month ago japan.internet.com reported on a survey by JR Tokai Express Research into online payments. Towards the end of June they got responses from 330 internet users; 64.8% were male, 14.2% in their twenties, 29.1% in their thirties, 34.8% in their forties, 17.9% in their fifties, and 3.9% in their sixties.

I’m not really sure why people feel such reluctance to using their credit card online, and the column makes no mention of the reasons either. Perhaps it is an issue of trust, or perhaps it is just a general sense of the internet being dangerous. I reacon that the net, SLL in particular, is safer than the average shop, and the danger of hacking web sites can result in data leaking from offline as well as online purchases.
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NEPROJAPAN recently published the results of their research into One Seg mobile phone digital television. Over a 17 hours period from 10am of the 6th of July to 3am the next day they had an open survey posted to the menuing systems of the three big mobile phone companies; DoCoMo, Softbank (or is it still Vodafone), and au. 3,787 subscribers successfully completed the survey; 58% were female, 3% in their teens, 38% in their twenties, 41% in their thirties, and 18% aged forty or older. Note that as a self-selecting survey available for just a limited time, heavy mobile phone users are most likely over-represented in the sample.

I myself quite want One Seg capability, but only (a) if accompanied by playback of MPEG from memory cards, so I rip my own contents, and (b) if available on a device other than a phone. I don’t want the battery going flat on me, and the need for a keyboard, etc, makes the device bulkier than it needs be.

Also note that the basic One Seg service is free, although I did see an advertisement at the weekend for a pay service of about 50 channels.
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey by JR Tokai Express Research on mobile phones and memory cards. The results presented in the story were in fact extracted from fuller research in JR Tokai Express Research’s 26th regular survey on mobile phone upgrading requirements. 330 people completed their private internet questionnaire; 69.7% of the sample was male, 10.6% in their twenties, 37.6% in their thirties, 33.3% in their forties, 13.0% in their fifties, and 5.5% in their sixties.

With phone cameras now up to 2 megapixels or more, and music download and playback features becoming commonplace, users of both these features may require somewhere to offload the data. I don’t know about the latest music phones, but many of the previous models with memory card slots came with a 16Mb card included. This should be used as a baseline when looking at Q2. Also, the current market price for a 128MB mini-SD card (the most-used format) is about 2,500 yen.
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As the rainy season finally finishes and the real summer season starts, the probability of lightning strikes increases. With this in mind, japan.internet.com published the results of a survey by goo Research into computers and lightning. Between the 21st and 23th of July they got 1,084 successfully completed responses to their internet-based questionnaire. In the sample 53.5% were female, 22.7% in their twenties, 39.7% in their thirties, 24.9% in their forties, 10.0% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.

Note that the headline is a bit of a stretch on the truth, but I’ve got limited space and want to keep it snappy! I love lightning myself, and I have many fond memories of sitting in the evening cool on terraces in Southern France or Austria watching huge storms firing bolts into the surrounding hillsides. Conversely, wifey is extremely wary of them, and as soon as she hears a rumble of thunder, it’s off with the TV and air conditioner until the storm passes.

However, I am rather sceptical about the 20% who say they are unaware that lightning can damage electronics! Was there something odd in the wording of the question?
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Having looked at healing sounds earlier this month, this time goo Ranking looked at what smells evoked images of summer. As usual with goo Rankings, we have absolutely no demographic information whatsoever, so take these numbers with the usual pinch of salt.

For me, if I were being cynical, I would say the smell of fetid sewers and rubbish bins are the most notable summer perfumes of Japan, but to be non-cynical it would be either the smoke of fireworks or newly-cut grass.

The scores are, as usual, 100 points for the top answer and all the others rated as a percentage of the top vote-getter.
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Another survey that MyVoice performed at the start of July was on environmental issues and MOTTAINAI. 12,326 members of their MyVoice monitor community successfully completed a private internet questionnaire; 54% of the sample was female, 3% in their teens, 22% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

MOTTAINAI, or to translate, “what a waste”, is a Japanese word cleverly adopted by Wangari Muta Maathai and her Greenbelt Movement, and clumsily, in my opinion, adopted by Japanese businesses in order to flog more tat or to appear green. It may be worth pointing out that another environmental campaign, Cool Biz, has, I fear, dropped out of the public awareness as a real measure, and has become merely lipservice towards environmentalism. One of the train companies I use during my commute, for instance, said in their fortnightly free paper that the company would be supporting Cool Biz by setting the air conditioner to 26°C in most carriages, and 27°C in the lightly air-conditioned carriages. However, it’s cold enough most mornings and evenings to give me goose-pimples in shirt sleeves, and in fact last weekend I checked an in-carriage thermometer and it was reading 20°C in the lightly air-conditioned carriage. MOTTAINAI indeed!
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on commercial email magazines. They interviewed by means of a private internet-based questionnaire 331 people working in private industry. 76.1% of the sample was male, 14.5% in their twenties, 45.9% in their thirties, 32.9% in their forties, 6.3% in their fifties, and just 0.3% (one person) in their sixties.

Many major companies with online presences produce these email magazines, although one drawback I find is that whilst subscribing is easy, unsubscribing can be a pain, as there is rarely a one-click solution; often one needs to log into an account, find the settings, then turn them off. I have had to redirect a few of them straight to the spam bin as I’ve been unable to find out how to turn them off!
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