With Coming of Age ceremonies being held mainly on the 14th of January this year, it is timely to look at a recent survey of these soon-to-be adults conducted by MacroMill Inc on the topic of new adults, specifically how they see their future.
Demographics
Over the 20th and 21st of December 2007 516 members of the Macromill monitors who will be attending a Coming of Age ceremony in 2008 completed a private online questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and of course all were either 19 or 20 years old.
Freeterism seems accetable in certain circumstances to a majority of people in Q7, which was a surprise to me. Freeter is the Japanese word mashed-up from freelance and arbeiter, which is from Arbeit, the German for part time work. It basically means casual labour, flitting between jobs as frequently as from day-to-day; working for a bit, taking time off for a bit.
In Q9, with just a slender majority happy to be able to drink might indicate a significant group of under-age drinkers, and as for smoking, I think it is safe to say that there must be a lot of kids who are already nicotine addicts! Read the rest of this entry »
With Coming of Age ceremonies being held mainly on the 14th of January this year, it is timely to look at a recent survey of these soon-to-be adults conducted by MacroMill Inc on the topic of new adults, specifically how they see their future.
Demographics
Over the 20th and 21st of December 2007 516 members of the Macromill monitors who will be attending a Coming of Age ceremony in 2008 completed a private online questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and of course all were either 19 or 20 years old.
One thing that always puzzles and suprises a lot of foreigners about Coming of Age is that ceremonies are held in Disneyland, and many people target getting a photo taken with Mickey Mouse. One would think that becoming an adult would mean throwing away the trappings of youth, and one gets the feeling that they are not saying goodbye to Mickey et al, but see you later; now as wage earners, they can visit the mouse at home under their own steam.
Although many seem to be quite positive regarding their own future, the number seeing Japan in a positive light in Q3 is depressing, and that is an issue I’d love to see explored further some time. I wonder how much is due to pensions, given Q5, but since there seems a high degree of interest in politics and elections in Q6, do these new adults view it as something they cannot change? Read the rest of this entry »
Here is another detailed yet interesting poll conducted on behalf of the Cabinet Office Japan on the subject of diplomacy, in particular the points of diplomacy that the Japanese goverment itself finds important, and that they hope the populace do to.
Demographics
Between the 4th and 14th of October 2007 3,000 adults from all over the country were randomly selected from the voter rolls to take part in this survey. 1,757 people, or 58.6%, were available and agreed to take part in face-to-face interviews. 52.4% were female, 9.3% in their twenties, 14.5% in their thirties, 18.3% in their forties, 22.3% in their fifties, 20.7% in their sixties, and 14.9% aged seventy or older. As an additional data point, 40.1% had never been abroad, 56.1% had been abroad for a short trip, and 3.9% had stayed in one country for more than three months.
The second half of this survey is also extremely interesting for me, and it has answers from which both supporters and detractors can extract ammunition. PKO operations see much higher levels of support than I would have suspected, which perhaps suggests why Osawa’s idea for troops on the ground in Afghanistan was not as surprising and contradictory as it first sounded. Read the rest of this entry »
Here is another detailed yet interesting poll conducted on behalf of the Cabinet Office Japan on the subject of diplomacy, in particular the points of diplomacy that the Japanese goverment itself finds important, and that they hope the populace do to.
Demographics
Between the 4th and 14th of October 2007 3,000 adults from all over the country were randomly selected from the voter rolls to take part in this survey. 1,757 people, or 58.6%, were available and agreed to take part in face-to-face interviews. 52.4% were female, 9.3% in their twenties, 14.5% in their thirties, 18.3% in their forties, 22.3% in their fifties, 20.7% in their sixties, and 14.9% aged seventy or older. As an additional data point, 40.1% had never been abroad, 56.1% had been abroad for a short trip, and 3.9% had stayed in one country for more than three months.
This is a great survey, one of the most detailed I’ve seen for a while. It also features the first bit of blatent propaganda that I’ve seen in a Cabinet Office survey. Note in Q3 where I have mention ‘the so-called “Reparations”‘. This is actually a literal translation of the Japanese, いわゆる「過去の清算」, iwayuru “kako no seizan”, complete with quotation marks.
Q3 also shows nearly nine in ten interested in the North Korean kidnap victims, very different from my foreign friends, who are almost to a man (or a woman) sick fed up with the coverage of the issue and how Japanese petulance on this matter threatens to wreck much of the progress being made. I’d put a loony on the other side of the water armed to the back teeth with conventional and nuclear missiles much higher on my list of priorities. I also notice the lack of a question on how profits from pachinko are sometimes funnelled to the North Korean regime. Read the rest of this entry »
With much of Japan in ever-present danger of being wiped out by an earthquake, and with the recent launch of the earthquake early warning system, the Cabinet Office Japan decided to take a look at earthquake preparedness.
Demographics
Between the 4th and 14th of October 2007 3,000 adults from all over Japan were randomly selected. 1,757 of these took part in face-to-face interviews. Age and sex breakdown was not reported, although Cabinet Office surveys tend to have a more even age spread than other surveys.
If you live in Tokyo, the bad news is that the city is overdue being flattened by the big one; Nagoya is due to be hit by a tsunami, and Osaka will probably get the two for the price of one. We’ve actually just bought emergency kits; actually, it was stored up points from my credit card, so we spent it on two evacuation kits and a table-top stove. I don’t think we have a gas canister for that, though… We usually have a bath tub of water sitting around, but we’ve got a funny toilet that won’t flush when the electricity’s off. If the worst comes to the worst, we plan to evacuate to the next-door town; we live on the border between two, and across the line is a posh school that’s bound to have decent facilities and is slightly closer than our official emergency centre, a dingy, slightly falling down concrete shed.
In Japan I’ve been to a number of UNESCO World Heritage sites – the Hiroshima Genbaku Dome (the dome itself is a bit of a disappointment), old Kyoto and Nara, Himeji Castle and I think Koyasan, which falls into the Kii mountains heritage zone. To find out that the average Japanese person feels about these sites, MyVoice performd a survey on this topic of Japan’s World Heritage sites.
Demographics
Over the first five days of October 2007 17,163 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 17% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 16% in their fifties.
The company that I work for every year produces a calendar with excellent photographs of World Heritage sites; back when I worked in Scotland we got a whole box of them free to distribute to business contacts and ourselves, but now in Japan we have to pay for them, but regardless, every year I try to send one back to the parents. At least they are rather cheap with the postage usually costing more than the calendar and mailing tube.
Without resorting to the web, I think I could only name three Scottish sites – Edinburgh Old and New Town, New Lanark, and I think St Kilda. Checking it out further, the fourth Scottish site is Neolithic Orkney, which I had a suspicion about. In Q2, I’ve definitely visited more than 10 World Heritage sites, although I couldn’t list them of the top of my head. By tracing my trips to Europe, though, I could name up to 20 locations where surely the majority of them must be listed! Similarly, the answer on naming 30 world sites; give me enough chances to give wrong answers and I could easily meet that figure!
Of the sites I haven’t been to, Iwami Ginzan Silver Mine is the one I’d most like to visit. I must admit, however, to having never heard of Yakushima until this survey! Read the rest of this entry »
I omitted to translate an earlier, more detailed, survey on this topic, so instead you’ll have to make do with the highlights from an article published on japan.internet.com regarding a survey conducted by goo Research into disasters.
Demographics
Between the 18th and 22nd of October 2007 1,086 members of goo Research’s online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.5% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 11.7% aged sixty or older.
Whilst we all hope that we don’t need it, there is always the risk of being hit by an earthquake, typhoon or other natural disaster in Japan. One important service offered by NTT is their Disaster Emergency Message Dial, basically an answering machine service that allows people to leave messages accessed through their home phone numbers. The linked site provides full English-language instructions on how to use it. Connected with this are the Broadband Disaster Message Board (web171), and the Mobile Disaster Message Boards, for DoCoMo, au, and SoftBank.
Note that the Broadband Disaster Message Board does not have an English version, which is pretty useless for relatives from overseas who might wish to check up on you, and, when you read the fine print at the bottom of the front page, you see that the recommended OSes are Windows 2000 SP4 and XP SP2, and the recommended broswers are Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0 only. Even better, you cannot interact with the buttons if you have JavaScript disabled, and the w3c validator dies trying to verify the code!
I haven’t looked at video games for a while, so I was glad to find this survey from goo Research on video game usage by children. Video games cover handhelds, TV-connected games and even PC-based gaming.
Demographics
Between the 25th of June and 13th of July 2007 1,165 elementary school children (or people claiming to be children) responded to a public questionnaire available on the Kids goo web site. The sample was 60.0% girls, 3.4% in first year of elementary school (ages six or seven), 5.0% in second year, 9.9% in third year, 20.3% in forth year, 26.9% in fifth year, and 34.6% in sixth year (ages eleven or twelve). Note that since this is a public internet-based survey there will definite sampling bias.
There’s so much great data in this survey! Q4SQ is perhaps my favourite; based on my casual observations, not surprisingly the DS totally dominates everything else. However, the other new portable, the PSP, is played less than the ancient Famicon and Super Famicon. I’m surprised that these two machines did so well; is this due to parents being cheap, to them having less worries about graphic violence in the older titles, not wanting to spoil the kids on photo-realism, or do kids really choose themselves to play these machines?
This rather revealing ranking survey by goo Ranking looked at what expectant Japanese women hope their husbands can do regarding childcare. I think the average western person (both male and female) may be surprised at how basic many of the hoped-for actions are. The fieldwork was conducted between the 20th and 24th of July 2007, but no further demographic information was given. Do any of my readers have first-hand experience of Japanese fathers as I cannot really believe that such basic tasks need to be wished for! Read the rest of this entry »
With Coming of Age ceremonies being held mainly on the 14th of January this year, it is timely to look at a recent survey of these soon-to-be adults conducted by MacroMill Inc on the topic of new adults, specifically how they see their future.
With Coming of Age ceremonies being held mainly on the 14th of January this year, it is timely to look at a recent survey of these soon-to-be adults conducted by MacroMill Inc on the topic of 
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In Japan I’ve been to a number of UNESCO World Heritage sites – the Hiroshima Genbaku Dome (the dome itself is a bit of a disappointment), old Kyoto and Nara, Himeji Castle and I think Koyasan, which falls into the Kii mountains heritage zone. To find out that the average Japanese person feels about these sites, MyVoice performd a survey on this topic of 
I omitted to translate an earlier, more detailed, survey on this topic, so instead you’ll have to make do with the highlights from an article published on japan.internet.com regarding a survey conducted by goo Research into 
I haven’t looked at video games for a while, so I was glad to find this survey from goo Research on 
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