世論 What Japan Thinks

With Japan due back from Germany tomorrow morning (no, I have no confidence in them being able to beat Brazil by two clear goals), let’s look at a recent ranking survey by DIMSDRIVE Research on what people would like to see a World Cup of. They interviewed 4,597 members of their internet monitor group, with 2,383, or 51.8%, male.

Note that many of the sports mentioned already have world championships, so perhaps people mean they want to see coverage of these events, or they are ignorant of their existence, as I was too until I started searching. The links you see below go to existing world championships or world federations of the sports mentioned, or just news of such events.

Note also that the top three involve food either directly or indirectly.
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japan.internet.com recently published a survey conducted JR Tokai Express Research on the use of home networking. They interviewed 330 people from all over the country to find out their views. 60.6% of the sample was male; age demographics were 20.3% in their twenties, 31.2% in their thirties, 27.9% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 5.2% in their sixties.

My personal experience with “wartraining” (like wardriving, only from the train!) is that on my ride home I can pick up about 60 or so open wireless access points according to NetStumbler, the bulk of them being Yahoo BB! wireless routers in their default configuration. Sadly this survey (or at least the free preview that I have translated) did not ask any security-related questions.
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japan.internet.com presented the results of a survey by goo Research into the FIFA World Cup™ and the internet. They interviewed 1,015 people from their monitor group on the 16th to 18th of this month (Japan’s second match against Croatia kicked off late on the evening of the 18th). The sample was 57.2% female, 3.0% were in their teens, 20.3% in their twenties, 42.9% in their thirties, 22.7% in their forties, 8.0% in their fifties, and 3.2% in their sixties.

The article gives a gratuitous plug to the Firefox plugin Joga, so I will too, even though I am an Opera man myself.
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DISMDRIVE Research released their 81st Ranking Research results, and one of these was a look at what folklore or superstitions people worry about. 4,597 people replied with the single (I think) superstition that they pay most attention to. 2,383 of the respondents, or 51.8%, were male.

This is a fun one for me, as the folk traditions here are often very different from home; I have never heard here of walking under a ladder being unlucky (probably because all ladders get coned off and have two guys waving batons to steer you round the obstacle), urinating on a bee sting seems a very popular (but totally ineffective) antidote, and PET bottles lined up outside houses to scare off cats don’t work.

Note that effect of black cats crossing your path is…umm, I’m not sure any more! Back home in Scotland it was good luck (I think – my memory’s going!) but in Japan it’s bad luck, according to this survey. I remember the Tom and Jerry cartoons where they’d have a black cat causing bad luck, so perhaps that’s the American belief. This random web page says that Japan is good luck, so I am now totally confused!
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with JR Tokai Express Research, looked at the issue of mobile phones for children. At the start of June they interviewed 330 people, 92.4% male, between the ages of 30 and 50, employed by public or private enterprises, and having children. You will know from my previous reports on surveys that women are not well-represented in the workforce, especially after childbirth.

au in particular are heavily promoting their children’s mobile phone on television right now; the parent (mother, of course) gets a live update overlaid on a map of where the child, or to be more precise, the child’s mobile is. I personally believe that most of these GPS tracking features are playing on unnecessary fear. I’d love to see a survey asking purchasers of these phones if they also (a) belt up their kids in the car, (b) get them to wear a helmet on the bike, and don’t ride two (or even three) up on mother’s bike, and (c) don’t leave under-10s home alone, all of which are much more injury- or death-prone than stranger-danger.
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I found this entertaining survey performed by the rather strangely named “Almost Daily ITOI Newspaper” (HOBO NIKKAN ITOI SHINBUN) on what people usually carry in their bags. The demographics are not very well defined, but over a period of five days perhaps sometime last month, around 40,000 people answered a questionnaire (web based?) with around 25,000 valid replies received. Within that sample there is significant number who don’t carry bags. Neither the sex nor age breakdown is noted.

The survey results listed the top 60 answers (including sketches of each item, for those who can’t read Japanese but want to see the full list) with a short paragraph about each result written in an extremely casual chatty style, almost like blank verse. For the sake of brevity, I’ll skip many of the lower ranked items.
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In a survey performed over a week at the end of May, infoPLANT looked at how the Japanese brush their teeth. They used their usual method, a self-selecting questionnaire presented through the DoCoMo iMode menu system. They got 6,585 valid responses to the survey, with 67.0% of the sample female.

The state of Japanese teeth are one of common stereotypes one hears of, and a topic that I have featured before, in a translation of a survey on this topic last year by MyVoice.

I’m surprised that about three in ten brush soon after getting up, when after breakfast would be better, I believe; and less women brush before going to bed rather than after breakfast, although perhaps if those brushing at bath time, which is traditionally just before bed time, is added in, we would see the last thing at night figure would be higher.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at the issue of communication on the internet. They surveyed 1,019 members of the goo Research Montiro group by means of a private internet survey. Demographically, 55.8% were female, 2.4% were teenagers, 1,8% in their twenties, 40.4% in their thirties, 26.0% in their forties, and 9.4% in their fiftes.

The survey’s keyword was 不快感, fukaikan, or discomfort; the moment when the survey respondent felt like cursing 「ムカっ！」, muka!, an exclamation abbreviated from むかつく, mukatsuku, a feeling of irritation or annoyance.

I’m surprised that only just over one in three had been offended on the web! Whether this reflects usage patterns that stay away from viper nests like the infamous 2-channel, or whether it shows people are desensitised, I am not sure, although Q3 does indicate that almost half the respondents find net communication more offensive than face-to-face, suggesting it might be usage patterns more than sensitivity that determines whether or not people take offence.
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Having recently looked at what people do when their computer has a problem, now NEPROJAPAN co, ltd recently carried out a survey to find out about users’ experiences regarding problems with their mobile phones either breaking or getting lost. One day in mid-May of this year they posted an open self-selecting questionnaire to the three leading mobile phone companies’ (iMode, Vodafone live! and EZweb) menu systems and got 3,695 valid replies. The sample was 60% female, 3% in their teens, 37% in their twenties, 43% in their thirties, and 17% aged forty or older.

My phone currently has a half-dead sub-screen, but apart from that, I once lost an earlier phone in a taxi somewhere. Luckily I actually had a backup of my address book as I’d just bought some connection software and had been playing around with it. Since then, however, I must admit to being remiss about backups, although pictures do get semi-regularly offloaded and imported into my PC whenever the internal memory fills up.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with JR Tokai Express Research, at the start of June looked at what engineers thought about changing to Linux. They interviewed 330 engineers (not just software, I don’t think), with 90.6% male (a sad reflection on women in the workplace), with 12.7% in their twenties, 43.9% in their thirtiees, 37.6% in their forties, 5.5% in their fifties, and just one person, or 0.3% of the sample, aged sixty or over.

The reasons for people refusing to use Linux on their primary desktop seem interesting (just for the record, I would probably put myself in this category); the top answer, the lack of usable applications, doesn’t mention what sort of stuff people feel is missing. Next, Windows (Microsoft Office, I suppose) document compatibility; if my workplace is anything to go by, there are a number of (needlessly, IMO) complex macro-based documents that we use, which, I hear, causes major problems for the free software alternatives. The third reason, difficulty in set up and settings is mostly untrue, although there are problems if you have an unsupported device that needs a manual install. Other applications often don’t stick a nice friendly icon on your menus when they finish, which is a genuine problem.
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