世論 What Japan Thinks

This latest survey from goo Ranking looked at what aspects of current coworkers do they hate.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 24th of May 2010 1,152 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 61.0% of the sample were male, 11.2% in their teens, 20.7% in their twenties, 28.8% in their thirties, 21.8% in their forties, 10.2% in their fifties, and 7.3% 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.

My complaints would be constant sniffing and passive-aggressive behaviour. I’d also admit to doing more than one or two of the activities on the list…
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It’s a while since I’ve looked at a Wikipedia survey, and although the numbers haven’t changed significantly since the last time, this survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into Wikipedia serves as a reminder that it’s still as popular as ever.

Demographics

Between the 24th and 26th of June 2010 1,097 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 17.0% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 15.4% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

I’ve done some editing of Wikipedia myself; wearing a different hat on one of my other blogs I’ve made amendments to some of the Trusted Computing-related entries. However, being in favour of it, myself and a couple of other users are outnumbered by those wishing to retain the NPOV that Trusted Computing is the spawn of the devil^{[citation not needed]}.
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In this the latest mobile phone upgrade needs survey from goo Research, their 52nd in the series, in the report by japan.internet.com they chose to focus on camera-related issues.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 23rd of June 2010 exactly 1,000 mobile phone users from the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.1% of the survey were female, 1.9% in their teens, 13.3% in their twenties, 24.4% in their thirties, 29.2% in their forties, and 21.2% aged fifty or older.

In the latest round of summer model mobile phones, they are a good number now with 13 megapixel cameras, although as most people will tell you, it’s not the raw megapixels but the quality of the sensor that is important. On a mobile with a limited size and often cheap lens, above five or eight megapixels you’ll not see any benefit, and perhaps even a degradation.
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This isn’t the first survey to indicate this, but this recent survey from Media Interactive, reported on by japan.internet.com, into Apple’s iPhone backed up statistics on the iPhone being almost as much a second phone as an only phone.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 23rd of June 2010 exactly 1,000 internet users completed an online survey. 51.5% of the sample were male, 0.8% in their teens, 15.2% in their twenties, 30.2% in their thirties, 29.1% in their forties, 17.1% in their fifties, and 7.6% in their sixties.

You may want to check out yesterday’s look at the iPad.

I must admit to feeling a bit jealous of iPhone and other smartphone users these days, and sadly my summer bonus isn’t enough to cover an upgrade. However, I won’t touch SoftBank, and docomo’s recent annoucement of their removal of SIM Lock from next year will probably delay my upgrade even longer.

Note that the survey was conducted between the 21st and 23rd of June, but the iPhone 4 didn’t go on sale until the day after, 24th June 2010, and that the 2G original iPhone was never released in Japan.
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With the iPad having been out in Japan for just about a month, iBridge Research Plus thought it about time to conduct another survey on Apple’s iPad. japan.internet.com chose to focus on the business applicability of the device in their report.

Demographics

On the 21st of June 2010 300 employed members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 72.3% of the sample were male, 14.7% in their twenties, 33.7% in their thirties, 29.7% in their forties, 19.0% in their fifties, and 3.0% in their sixties.

Shortly after it came out I read an article about a doctor in Japan using one in the operating theatre. At least he put it into a bag, but I thought it was a highly irresponsible thing to do, as the wi-fi could have interfered with the critical devices, for instance. For general hospital use, it needs a lot of work to be either germ-proof or washable – Panasonic already make a robust but boring tablet for medical use, but I’d be much more comfortable seeing a medical professional using that instead of an iPad!

I think the significant roles for the iPad in business are perhaps limited to photography-related work and to life insurance and other financial salespeople, especially of the home visiting type. There’s probably also a niche for travel agents as a terminal for customers to view virtual brochures and the like.
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The fifth regular survey into consumer games machines by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com found that in the last year just one in six had increased their games playing.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 15th of June 2010 1,073 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.6% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, and 27.3% aged fifty or older.

I wonder how many of the 43 others in Q1 owned iPod Touches or iPads? They aren’t really games machines per se, but they do get advertised as such, so it would be interesting to see them broken out. Furthermore, if they were counted, I wonder how many of these people are playing more games on their Apples? Let’s hope the sixth time round they have a look.
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The first question one might have is what is diversity; the immediate thing that springs to my mind, at least, is having an anti-discrimination policy at work covering race, creed, gender and sexual orientation. However, in this survey into diversity management by goo Research only one and a half (“foreign” rather than “race”) of these groups appear.

Demographics

Between the 16th and 21st of June 2010 930 members of the goo Research monitor group employed in companies with more than 50 employees completed a private internet-base questionnaire. The sex and age splits were not reported, but 23.3% worked in manufacturing, 14.9% in service, food or drink, 10.5% for local or national government, 9.8% in retail, 9.5% in information or distribution, 6.8% in construction or real estate, 5.6% in finance, 4.3% in distribution, 1.6% in farming, fisheries, forestry, mining, or utilities, and 13.7% in other industry. 16.3% worked for companies with between 50 and 99 employees, 30.1% with 100 to 499 employees, 11.0% with 500 to 999 employees, 19.9% with 1,000 to 4,999 employees, and 22.7% in companies with 5,000 or more employees.

The company I work for does just about everything in Q1. I’m not sure about a specific older person employment scheme, whatever that might be, but we do actively hire staff in mid-career, not just new graduates. We’re extremely active recently in foreigner employment, and I’m surprised that our managing director’s recent writings on the matter have barely hit the Japanese newspapers and blogs, let alone the English-language sphere.

It’s interesting that diversity management here seems to be more about diverse employment patterns for existing staff, trying to allow for working styles other than the 9 to 5 10, work before family. As mentioned above, our company has generous paternity leave on offer, but even this year when two guys’ wives gave birth the guys took one day off for the birth and another for when she came out of hospital before returning to the same old 9 to 10 (pm of course) regardless of necessity.

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As well as being one of the more popular hobbies in Japan, driving is also a popular date activity. However, the mood can be spoilt, so this survey from goo Ranking looked at what got the passenger annoyed at the driver and the driver annoyed at the passenger.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 24th of May 2010 1,152 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 61.0% of the sample were male, 11.2% in their teens, 20.7% in their twenties, 28.8% in their thirties, 21.8% in their forties, 10.2% in their fifties, and 7.3% 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.

Given the nature of dating and the relationship of the sexes, I would guess that most of the passengers are female and the drivers are male.

As my wife doesn’t have a licence, her back-seat driving particularly irritates me, followed closely by her terrible directions, occasionally overriding the car navigation’s correct route. Then there’s the constant toilet breaks, lack of distance awareness in both “Are we there yet?” and in setting up 500 km routes that don’t take into account the effect of tiredness on me. And then there’s… I’d better stop now.

Photo of a taxi traffic jam from MatthewRad on flickr.
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Given the combination of the small size of the average Japanese home, all-too-common paper-thin walls, DIY not being very popular, and of course many providers throwing in free wireless-ready routers and USB wi-fi dongles, it’s perhaps more a suprise that wired LANs are relatively popular in this survey from iBridge Research Plus, reported on by japan.internet.com, into home LANs.

Demographics

On the 7th of June 2010 300 members of the iBridge online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.0% of the sample were male, 13.7% in their twenties, 30.7% in their thirties, 31.3% in their forties, 17.7% in their fifties, and 6.7% in their sixties.

My flat came with built-in wired LAN, and I worry a bit about the security aspect so I haven’t bothered to get any sort of wi-fi add-on kit as it’s not that much bother to plug the LAN cable into the wall.
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Read more on: ibridge research plus,lan,plc,wi-fi

With the election for the upper house upon us, although the government has lifted the ban on political party web pages (they used to have to blank) so the candidates are now able to update their blogs, etc, email and Twitter remains banned. To see what people think, goo Research, in conjuction with the Mainichi Shimbun, took a look at what people thought of internet-based election campaigns.

Demographics

Over the 8th and 9th of June 2010 1,079 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. All were of voting age, but no further demographic breakdown was given.

Note that as usual for this kind of report, don’t knows have been eliminated, so I cannot give a sample size for each of the questions.

At least one candidate is ignoring the ban, however.
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