世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing Inc, published the results of research into personal computer maintenance. They interview 300 people, exactly 50:50 male and female, and exactly 20% aged 18 or 19, and 20% in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties.

I can’t say I regularly clean inside my PC, if at all, except to just blow dust out of the way when putting new bits in! I wonder if the virus scan option in Q2SQ includes a spyware check?
Read the rest of this entry »

MyVoice decided to do a totally unseasonal poll last month, surveying 14,676 people from their community by means of a private internet poll about enjoying autumn. 54% of the sample was female, 4% in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

This survey mentions a book and film called “秋の夜長”, aki no yonaga, “The Long Autumn Nights”, but I have an awful feeling I am falling into a linguistic or cultural hole, as WWWJDIC has an example sentence “秋の夜長は読書にまさるものはありません。” translated as ”
There is no use feeling sorry about it.” I might literally translate that as “There’s nothing like reading ‘The Long Autumn Nights’”, but there seems to be no such book or film on Amazon. Perhaps the true meaning is just to spend the long nights lost in a book or a video? Oh well, I’m here to try to improve my Japanese, so I might as well make my mistakes in public.

UPDATE: It seems that “The Long Autumn Nights” is just an expression, but the Japanese love of putting things into quotation marks was throwing me!
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve recently come across Japan Probe, an interesting blog on things Japanese that I can recommend you all pay a visit. I especially liked his translation of the top 100 favourite historical figures, which you might find surprising.

He also highlights, as does the BBC, how sleep deprevation costs Japan $30 billion per year. I don’t think that sales of these energy drinks make up for that loss! At my office, for instance, at least one person regularly falls asleep during meetings, and morning mass meetings have about 10% to 15% of the crowd nodding off in their chairs.

Next, we subscribed to Cat’s Heart, a cat care magazine which features the occassional reader survey. This month I learnt when 460 readers were surveyed, 62.6% reported their cats can open doors or drawers, etc; for vet bills, a vaccine averaged 5,222 yen amongst the 286 owners asked, and getting your kitten fixed costs 14,448 yen for boys and 21,449 yen for girls according to 190 and 180 owners.

Finally, this week Trivia no Izumi decided to look at if astrologers would tell the fortune of animals. In their usual deadpan style, they first got three identical newly-hatched chickens, gave them three different names, and took them off to get read. After the astrologer had rabbited on for a bit, the interviewer asked what happens if we rename them all to the same name. Next, three eels (I think they were eels) were borrowed from a hatchery attached to a restaurant. One reading later, all three ended up in eel pie. A tropical fish got read, then the aphid in the tank with it, which we were assured would have a long life. The fish promptly ate it. Finally, someone volunteered to read four beansprouts and went on about how one had a great future as an estate agent. The resultant statistic was that assuming their palms got crossed with sufficient silver (3,000 to 4,000 yen for 15 minutes seemed the going rate), 97 out of the 100 asked would do readings for animals.

japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, published the results of the 9th regular monthly survey on RSS usage. 1,013 members of the goo Research monitor group from all over Japan replied to the private internet-based survey. 56.2% of the sample was female, 2.5% were teenagers, 22.4% in their twenties, 40.6% in their thirties, 23.6% in their forties, 8.3% in their fifties, and 2.7% aged sixty or over.

I can’t say I’ve ever spotted an RSS feed with adverts in it, even though there is a Google program for AdSense for this, and there is another service whose name escapes me right now that offers a similar service. As for visiting sites with feeds, I only do so if I feel the need to comment on a post or look at who might have commented on it. Looking at my log files, I can tell from my LiveJournal feed that just 5% of the readers actually visit my site!
Read the rest of this entry »

japan.internet.com, in conjunction with JR Tokai Express Research, recently carried out some research to find out how people used webcams. They interviewed 334 people from all over the country; 71.6% were male, 18.0% in their twenties, 37.7% in their thirties, 30.2% in their forties, 12.6% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixtiees.

Unfortunately, this report of the survey results does not give any information about the frequency of use of these web cameras. I would not be surprised, however, if the average user uses it just once or twice then the novelty wears off, but perhaps I’m just biased as I have a dislike of appearing on camera, both still and moving!
Read the rest of this entry »

In their 72nd Ranking Research questionnaire, DIMSDRIVE Research took a look at what Japanese people said they did before they went to sleep. They interviewed 5,298 people from their internet monitor group, 50.3% male, about their habits at the end of March this year.

You will notice that no-one mentions interacting with one’s partner, even just a cuddle or a chat, as what they do when they can’t sleep. Whether this is an uncommon practice or if this and more saucy answers were weeded out, I do not know.
Read the rest of this entry »

japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at how people obtained and used audio and video contents at home. They interviewed 1,046 members of goo’s internet monitor group from all over the country by means of a private web-based questionnaire. 55.7% of the sample were female, 22.7% in their twenties, 42.6% in their thirties, 24.2% in their forrties, 7.7% in their fifties and 2.8% sixty years old or more.

The one very surprising outcome from this survey is that almost one in five has paid to download video contents! Perhaps the full results of this survey describe what type of contents people are paying for, but I have my suspicions… Conversely, only 3% admit to using P2P software.
Read the rest of this entry »

japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing Inc, looked at what people thought about mobile phone cameras. They interviewed 150 male and 150 female mobile phone owners from up and down the country; 20.0% were aged 18 or 19, and similarly 20.0% in each of the twenties, thrities, forties, and fifties age bands.

My current camera has a mere 60,000 pixels, so all it produces are pretty muddy images that look awful even on the tiny screen! However, the QR Code reader is an excellent feature that’s well-supported by many print magazines, but as I understand it they are still to make headway in the rest of the world.
Read the rest of this entry »

Over four day in the middle of May, goo Research asked 2,124 members of their monitor group by means of a private internet-based questionnaire about their thoughts on the upcoming 2006 FIFA World Cup™. The survey group was 50.8% female, 16.8% in their teens, 16.4% in their twenties, 20.4% in their thirties, 20.9% in their forties, 19.3% in their fifties, 5.3% in their sixties, and just 0.9% aged 70 or older.
Read the rest of this entry »

japan.internet.com, in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, looked at how businesspeople manage their schedules. They interviewed 332 people employed by private enterprises by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 82.8% of the sample were male, 12.3% were in their twenties, 36.1% in their thirties, 34.0% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.
Read the rest of this entry »