世論 What Japan Thinks

I saw two surveys recently that perhaps didn’t get as much press as they should have, so this is my attempt to redress the balance. The two subjects were comparing the expectations of Koreans and Japanese for the 2006 FIFA World Cup™, and the perception of body image and beauty amongst asian women (found via 3Yen).
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Following on from yesterday’s survey where we learnt that the Japanese on the whole will be watching the 2006 FIFA World Cup™ at home, MyVoice also surveyed their community at the start of May to find out what they thought about snacking, perhaps whilst watching the football on the TV. 14,171 people responded to their private internet survey. 46% were male, 22% were in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 13% in their fifties.

The particular type of snacks considered is おつまみ, otsumami, a word that refers to finger food that is consumed with a drink, usually of an alcoholic variety. When exactly a snack becomes an otsumami is one of these mysteries of the Orient; does a biscuit with a cup of tea count? A large slice of cake doesn’t seem to, but how small does it have to be to become an otsumami? An individually wrapped shop-bought cake slice counts but a home-baked and cut doesn’t? Who knows!

For more information about the drinks that might be consumed whilst snacking at home, please consult my earlier translation of a survey into alcohol at home.
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MyVoice surveyed thier community at the start of May to find out what their plans were for the upcoming 2006 FIFA World Cup™. They got 14,800 replies to their private internet questionnaire, with 54% of the respondents female. 4% were in their teens, 22% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 23% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

I’d like to watch a number of the World Cup matches, but sadly wifey controls the remote! I’ll probably have to make do with the highlights on news programs, which will no doubt be 95% covering the Japanese team, then 5% for the rest of the matches. I’ve got little confidence in Zico as the manager; despite him winning the silverware at the Asian Cup, I just don’t warm to him.

The press seems to have already written off the qualifying round as a mere formality despite Croatia being rather strong, and of course there’s Brazil there too.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing Inc, looked at how picky people were about their mobile phones. They interviewed by means of a private internet questionnaire 300 people equally split between male and female. Similarly, 16.6% were in their teens (18 or 19 years old only), and the same 16.6% in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and sixties.

Exactly what consistutes pickiness is not defined within the survey. Whether it is manufacturer, colour, price, feature set, or any other element that makes people hum and haw over their selection, we do not know. Perhaps the fuller results of this survey may clear up this matter, but we shall never know!
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japan.internet.com published the results of goo Research’s 25th regular survey into blogging. Every month since April 2004 they have looked into the blogging market, and the highlights from this April’s results are presented below. They interviewed 1,068 people from their monitor group by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.1% of the sample was female, and 2.4% were in their teens, 26.6% in their twenties, 40.1% in their thirties, 20.7% in their forties, 7.7% in their fifties, and 2.5% sixty years old or older.

The huge number choosing to remain anonymous is rather surprising to me, and I’d like to find out about what sort of blogs people are hiding behind. Perhaps a further study on this matter is in order.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at the use of Skype in Japan. They interviewed 1,011 people from their research monitor group by means of an internet-based questionnaire. 41.6% of the sample was male, 24.3% were in their twenties, 43.2% in their thirties, 25.4% in their forties, and 7.0% in their fifties.

Skype has been somewhat heavily promoted in Japan, with Livedoor being the main partner, and various hardware is available such as cordless phones or adapters for standard phone lines. However, with Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others offering free PC to PC VoIP service, and with the launch recently of a free IP telephony service in Japan called freep, the marketplace is getting rather crowded.

For those of you interested in learning Japanese, Tae Kim occassionally holds Skype-based language lessons.
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With the rainy season soon approaching (or already approached, if you live in Okinawa), the fifth of Japan’s unique four seasons, MyVoice surveyed their community to find out what they thought regarding umbrellas. At the start of May they got 14,823 replies to their web-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 4% were in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% aged fifty or older.

I own, or at least frequently use perhaps four brollies; my most commonly used is one from Huis Ten Bosch, followed by an extremely tatty fold-up tartan effort I keep in the office for emergencies. My favourite is a Tarepanda one, and I have a slightly posh fold-up brollie with a street scene of Berlin on it.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing Inc performed a survey on next-generation game consoles. They interviewed 366 self-confessed gamers; 50.3% were male, 25.4% in their teens (18 or 19 to be exact), 24.9% in their twenties, 24.6% in their thirties, and 25.1% in their forties.

With the recent name change of the next Nintendo to Wii (I try to think of the name as referring to going “whee!”, not going wee…) the awareness of the name seems rather low; it would have been interesting to have used the previous Revolution codename instead in this survey. I will keep an eye open to see if the awareness of Wii increases in the coming months.
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infoPLANT recently released the results of a survey they conducted into game machines. They conducted their research by means of a public questionnaire available through the iMode menu system for a week at the end of April. 5,924 people completed the survey, with 62.5% female.

Note the figures suggesting that the Nintendo DS is significantly more popular with the older generation. Surely this must be related to the current boom in brain training in Japan, in particular the massively popular series for the DS, a set of titles I dearly want to buy, along with the DS itself (and also a kanji dictionary), if I ever manage to earn any money from this blog!
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In a survey performed by infoPLANT on games machine ownership (warning: Japanese PDF), and translated in detail here, the most stunning result of the questionnaire is that the sales of the Nintendo DS seems to be driven by the older generation, as can be seen from the chart on the right.

The most likely explanation for this trend, I believe, is the brain training boom in Japan, in particular the Brain Age game and other similar titles that promise to ward off senility and keep one’s mind active, even though the celebrity advertising it on the television is merely a pretty young thing.

On a slight side note, my voice was one of the voices used to tune the recognition engine for British English for the European launch of the Brain Age titles.