Just a very quick translation for today, a look with japan.internet.com at a survey conducted by iBridge into public libraries and the internet.
Demographics
On the first of December 2008 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.7% of the sample were female, 13.0% in their twenties, 39.0% in their thirties, 33.0% in their forties, 9.0% in their fifties, and 6.0% in their sixties.
Note that internet services here are not public-access terminals in the library, but an external web site for the library.
I’ve never actually been to my local library, but I have checked out their web page for opening hours. Read the rest of this entry »
Yahoo! JAPAN recently annouced the results of a number of their “Best of 2008″, and one of the categories was the most clicked-through headline from Yahoo! News. The data was collected from all headlines displayed through Yahoo! NEWS between the 1st of November 2007 and 31st of October 2008.
You’ll notice that all of them are basically domestic stories, and most of the topics are either (or both) entertainment or death-related. You will note that nothing about politics, such as the minor matter of a change in prime ministers appears in the list, but in Japan’s defense I wonder if because these topics might have multiple reports, the clicks per story get diluted.
I hope most of my fellow readers resident in Japan have got their New Year greeting (nengajou) postcards ready, as time’s running out! To see how you should be approaching what I think is an important (in some aspects) custom, this detailed survey from MacroMill Inc looked at 2009 New Year Greetings.
Demographics
Over the 25th and 26th of November 2008 624 members of the MacroMill monitor group completed an internet-based private questionnaire. The group was split exactly 50:50 male and female overall and in each age group, and 16.7% in each of these age groups, 15 to 19 years old, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and sixty or older.
I’m nearly ready to go; I still have to import the addresses from my old postcard software to the new one, which involves a wee bit of Excel CSV file massage, but barring accidents I’ll be printing them out at the weekend. As for electronic greetings, I think it feels cheap to me, and unless I know it’s someone sending it in addition to a postcard, I feel hard done by.
In Q5, I’m surprised that what I thought would be the main reason for sending electronic greetings, saving money, didn’t feature as a distinct answer, and neither did some ecology-related reason. Read the rest of this entry »
No, not a free offer from me, but some research into 年賀状, nengajou, New Year Postcards conducted by iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com looking in particular at both free advertisement-plastered pre-franked postcards and the SNS mixi’s pay service for sending postcards to virtual friends whilst retaining privacy, a process which I wouldn’t be surprised if they have applied for a patent for.
Demographics
On the 25th of November 2008 300 people from the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were female, 14.3% in their twenties, 37.3% in their thirties, 31.7% in their forties, 10.3% in their fifties, and 6.3% in their sixties.
Looking at the web site giving the cards away (too late, the closing date is past!) it’s actually rather a good idea. The cards have the adverts inside the postcard and can be peeled open, otherwise you get an almost completely blank card for you do draw or print on as desired.
I’ve already ordered and received my Year of the Cow cards; two styles, one with Hello Kitty in a field of cows, the other is just a generic cute cartoon cow design. Both were designed and ordered over the internet, but we’ll be printing out the addresses at home. Read the rest of this entry »
Japan is well-known the world over for being a nation of newspaper readers, so on the surface the headline figure from this survey by DIMSDRIVE Research into newspaper purchase is not too big a surprise. A quick language note – in Japan 新聞, shimbun, is the Japanese for newspaper, which you could probably work out anyway from Q3!
Demographics
Between the 17th of September and the 2nd of October 2008 10,231 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitors completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were female, 1.2% in their teens, 13.4% in their twenties, 34.2% in their thirties, 30.2% in their forties, 14.8% in their fifties, and 6.2% aged sixty or older. By employement status, the three largest percentages were 40.4% full-time company employees, 20.7% homemakers, and 12.4% part-time or casual labour. By household income, 6.6% earned under 2 million yen per year, 19.8% under 4 million yen, 24.4% under 6 million yen, 15.3% under 8 million yen, 9.6% under 10 million yen, and 10.3% over 10 million yen. 14.0% were not saying or didn’t know.
One way that Japanese newspapers keep their print subscriptions up is to limit the amount they publish on their web sites. Most keep stories down to two or three paragraphs, often publishing just newswire articles, and expire them after just a few days.
If anything, the numbers reported here may be lower than actuality, as the third-biggest daily newspaper in Japan, the Seikyo Shimbun, is missing from the list. Whether this and other organisation’s dailies were explicitly excluded is not stated, as for instance the Shimbun Akahata (Red Flag – guess whose that is!) also shifts almost 1.7 million copies per day.
The photo is of Danny Choo being featured in a Japanese newspaper, from his flickr collection. I and many others, I think, are secdretly jealous that he gets such coverage and makes so much dosh just for doing the stuff he loves! Read the rest of this entry »
If you have been following the Japanese blogs or news wires this week, you surely must have seen headlines like – well, I thought I saw headlines, but they now seem to have disappeared! Anyway, there was quite a bit of fuss about 53% of Japanese seeing public safety problems due to an increase in tourism, but what is the truth behind that headline? Read the full details from the survey by the Cabinet Office Japan into Tourism Nation Japan and the Japan Tourism Agency.
Demographics
3,000 adults from all over the country were randomly selected from resident registers, and they were visited for face-to-face interviews between the 16th and 26th of October 2008. 1,853 people, or 61.8%, were available and completed the questionnaire. A breakdown by age and sex was not presented, however.
Note that the questions below were part of a bigger survey on other unreported topics.
Q3 is the question that has sparked the controversy, with the negative answers being singled out. My personal opinion is that since the increase in tourism is mostly from Korea and China, countries with none-too-friendly a view of Japan, and the Chinese especially have a reputation for being ill-mannered, and they are the biggest foreign criminal element in Japan, I can see one reason why the figure is high. Of course, one has to contrast that with the equally large percentage who expect the increase in tourists to decrease such prejudice through mutual understanding. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the first things one notices, indeed, one cannot avoid getting one’s senses assaulted by them regularly in Japan, is the ubiquitous pachinko parlour. Usage or otherwise of them was the subject matter of this recent survey by MyVoice.
Demographics
Over the first five days of November 2008 15,182 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 14% in their twenties, 6% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older.
The only good thing about pachinko are the adverts; one doing the rounds right now is for Star Wars pachinko – I’d love to see Danny Choo doing his Stormtrooper act playing one of these! Another enjoyable one is this:
At the world marches on, fixtures from our childhood become outdated and start to disappear, leaving just an empty feeling behind. This survey from goo Ranking looked at what disappearing items make the Japanese feel lonely
Demographics
Between the 21th and 24th of October 2008 1,056 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were female, 5.0% in their teens, 13.2% in their twenties, 28.4% in their thirties, 31.5% in their forties, 13.1% in their fifties, and 8.8% 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.
I can think of a lot of intangible items I miss, but as for the tangible, I do miss line printers with fan-fold paper! As a developer, running over a set of A4 pages with too much word-wrapping is just not as satisfying nor as productive as a heap of fan-fold. From the list, 18, quiz programs with members of the public is the one I can most identify with. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the big stories doing the rounds in Japan is the number of people getting busted for possession of maru, and the general moral panic over the matter. To try to quantify the size of the problem, the university student-targeted Social Networking Service LinNo today published the results of a survey of their users, as reported by ITMedia.
Demographics
Between the 11th and 18th of November 2008 465 university students who were members of the LinNo SNS completed an internet-based questionnaire. No further demographic information was provided.
The questionnaire seemed just a little tame to me, although perhaps a fuller set of questions was asked. Do students believe it should be legalised? Why was “join in” an option if a friend was puffing away, but not if it was a boy or girlfriend? What about usage of other drugs? What about the “just say no” policy? Do they believe it to be a gateway drug? Read the rest of this entry »
A new-to-me research company called realworld realresearch, which from a quick look at their site seems to be more in the business of being a shopping and stuff portal than a research agency, recently performed a survey into local authorities and IT, as reported by japan.internet.com.
Demographics
On the 13th of October 2008 1,199 people selected by some undescribed means completed a presumably online questionnaire. 52.0% of the sample were female, 15.0% were in their twenties, 16.0% in their thirties, 18.0% in their forties, 21.0% in their fifties, and 30.0% in their sixties. Given the round percentages, don’t ask why they couldn’t find one more person to round the sample up to 1,200! It’s also a curiously top-heavy sample, with the majority of the sample being over fifty.
I’m surprised that (as far as I know) no local authority has tried moving more services online, as one still needs to get a paper print-out of one’s residency certificate for such things as mortgages and other large loans, or at least why there cannot be vending machines that will spew out the documents 24-7 instead of requiring people to attend during working hours.
Just a very quick translation for today, a look with japan.internet.com at a survey conducted by iBridge into public libraries and the internet.
I hope most of my fellow readers resident in Japan have got their New Year greeting (nengajou) postcards ready, as time’s running out! To see how you should be approaching what I think is an important (in some aspects) custom, this detailed survey from MacroMill Inc looked at 
No, not a free offer from me, but some research into 
If you have been following the Japanese blogs or news wires this week, you surely must have seen headlines like – well, I thought I saw headlines, but they now seem to have disappeared! Anyway, there was quite a bit of fuss about 53% of Japanese seeing public safety problems due to an increase in tourism, but what is the truth behind that headline? Read the full details from the survey by the Cabinet Office Japan into 
One of the first things one notices, indeed, one cannot avoid getting one’s senses assaulted by them regularly in Japan, is the ubiquitous 
One of the big stories doing the rounds in Japan is the number of people getting 
A new-to-me research company called 
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