世論 What Japan Thinks

goo Research recently conducted their thirteenth regular survey into internet advertising, with japan.internet.com reporting on the results.

h3>Demographics
Between the 19th and 22nd of November 2010 1,036 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.8% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 15.9% in their forties, and 27.6% aged fifty or older.

To try to catch the third of you who click on contextual affiliate adverts, I’ll mention that if you are running under Windows AdMuncher by Murray Hurps is an excellent blocker for 99% of all advertisements and works with any browser. It’s not free, but it’s great value and might even pay for itself if you surf using a 3G connection. It’s blocked about 200 adverts a day on my netbook, and makes for a much more pleasant experience as valuable screen space isn’t consumed by huge adverts. Once again, buy AdMuncher by Murray Hurps through this link and help out What Japan Thinks!
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A recent survey from iShare took a look at strong and cool Japanese men, a follow-on from looks at strong and cool Japanese women, guys earning more than 10 million yen and guys with more than 10 million in the bank.

Demographics

Over the 27th and 28th of October 2010 1,856 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service in full-time employment and with a driving license completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 72.6% of the sample were male, 8.2% were in their twenties, 49.9% in their thirties, and 41.8% in their forties.

In Q10, not surprisingly Ken Watanabe (Last Samurai, Inception, etc) comes first – he’s the Japanese star I’d most like to meet.

Comparing with the woman’s results, for the blood type question the O and A percentages are basically reversed. Disappointly, however, there is no answer “I just don’t care” for that one. However, when it comes to real matters like work-life balance, for both strong and cool men and strong and cool women the figures were very similar. It might be interesting to have a follow-on questionnaire on the differences between images of the two sexes.
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This survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, was their regular look at keitai (mobile phone) novels, a genre of writing designed to be read on a mobile phone, and often written on them too. Common features include short sentences, paragraphs and chapters, and a casual writing style featuring emoticons and graphical emoji icons. This is the 7th time this approximately bi-monthly survey has been conducted; the sixth survey translation is here for reference.

Demographics

Between the 26th and 30th of November 2010 1,087 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.3% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

Unfortunately, the article just notes the halt in the rise of smartphone readers of keitai novels without any analysis. I don’t really have any insights either, so any conjecture would be a pure guess, so I’ll refrain from making one.
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As well as informing my readers about Japan, I also like to throw in some of my own heritage, here the word bidie-in, a far better word than the clinical cohabitee, the subject of this recent survey from goo Ranking into what people could not stand about their bidie-in.

Demographics

Over the 21st and 22nd of October 2010 1,075 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 66.3% of the sample were female, 9.9% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 30.9% in their thirties, 24.7% in their forties, 8.8% in their fifties, and 7.5% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.
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In Japan, it is the Christmas tradition that if you have a family you eat Kentucky Fried Chicken, if you have a partner you spend the night at a posh hotel, but for singles, what? goo Ranking decided it would be trying to find a partner, so this recent survey looked at what unattached people would do to try to find someone by Christmas.

Demographics

Over the 21st and 22nd of September 2010 1,072 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 68.2% of the sample were female, 10.4% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 29.8% in their thirties, 26.2% in their forties, 8.7% in their fifties, and 7.0% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

If none of the below work for you, try this article for some hints:

Here’s an interesting look by DIMSDRIVE Research at one particular Japanese word, 面倒くさい, mendokusai, bothersome. The word can be literally translated as “the smell of trouble”, and I always internally translated it as “a pain in the bum”, thus the title of today’s post.

Demographics

Between the 28th of April and the 12th of May 2010 13,802 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group managed to make enough effort to fill in a private online questionnaire. 52.4% of the sample were male, 0.6% in their teens, 8.5% in their twenties, 28.1% in their thirties, 32.8% in their forties, 18.9% in their fifties, and 11.0% aged sixty or older.

Here’s one Japanese-English dictionary with a number of example sentences.

I often mutter mendokusai under my breath at work, usually at procedures at work that are far more complicated than they need be. I did spend five minutes typing out a description of one of the work procedures, but then realised that there’s another even bigger pain in the bum, but as it’s too mendokusai for me to type it out, tough!

I’ll stick with mendokusai throughout this article, because as you can see from Q2SQ1, there are many nuances.
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This survey from iShare about the most helpful electrical device from 2010 also discovered that despite televisions being the biggest sellers this year and the eco points system being phased out, televisions were still the most popular buy.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 11th of November 2010 636 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.4% of the sample were male, 23.6% in their twenties, 30.2% in their thirties, and 46.2% in their forties.

When asked why they chose their answers for Q2, computers were cited as being usable for both work and play, and just being something people cannot lead their lives without. Mobile phones were indispensible and a part of life, television was something watched every day and as they’d bought a TV with a built-in hard disk their viewing frequency had increased. For white goods, the one answer chosen was for air conditioning, for all the hard work it put in over the summer.
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I haven’t seen any statistics on browser use in Japan for a while, so I was glad to get this data from goo Research via japan.internet.com on browsers.

Demographics

Between the 25th and 17th of November 2010 1,091 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.1% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.4% aged sixty or older.

Looking at worldwide statistics on browser usage Internet Explorer is on 52%, Firefox on 26% and Chrome on 11%, but these figures are based on actual page views, so it’s difficult to make a direct comparison. I was also suprised to see that only 13% here have a recommended browser at work or school, although some people might have locked-down PCs so they cannot actually make a change themselves.

You’ll note that this survey was collected on the web, yet 6.4% of the sample (70 people) said they knew what a browser was but didn’t use one… Just as well that they were eliminated from the follow-up question!
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One of the top tourist spots in Tokyo is Tokyo Tower, and a new tourist attraction under construction is the Tokyo Sky Tree, so this survey took a look at what people think of Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Sky Tree.

Demographics

Between the 27th of May and the 10th of June 2010 8,199 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 50.0% male, 0.8% were in their teens, 11.1% in their twenties, 31.5% in their thirties, 31.8% in their forties, 16.9% in their fifties, and 7.9% aged sixty or older.

Tokyo Sky Tree is a dreadful name (yes, they use the English words) but it’s an amazing tower. When complete it will be 634 metres high to the tip of its antenna, the tallest tower in the world. The height is easy to remember as it’s a mnemonic (why is that word so hard to remember how to spell?) for Musashi, the old name for the area in which it was built. Enough talk, here’s a picture of it from TANAKA Juuyoh on flickr.

A recent survey from iShare took a look at strong and cool Japanese women, a follow-on from looks at guys earning more than 10 million yen and guys with more than 10 million in the bank. They’ll be a look at strong and cool men later this week.

Demographics

Over the 18th and 19th of October 2010 2,122 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service in full-time employment and with a driving license completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 84.9% of the sample were male, 4.1% were in their twenties, 49.2% in their thirties, and 46.7% in their forties.

I find it interesting to note that in Q16, the top two strong and cool women both used to be men in Takarazuka Theatre, as was the woman in sixth place.

Oh, and don’t ask me to explain the fashion styles in Q17 any further as I haven’t a clue what they are.
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