世論 What Japan Thinks

A recent survey conducted by RealWorld RealResearch (I love that name!) and reported on by japan.internet.com into piracy revealed some very curious results on what pirate booty people parted with money for.

Demographics

Over the 12th and 13th of May 2009 1,015 members of the RealWorld RealResearch monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.7% of the sample were male, 3.8% in their teens, 10.7% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.9% in their forties, 22.3% in their fifties, and 24.7% aged sixty or older. (That’s a bit of an unusual age profile!)

In case you’re wondering, the Japanese for pirate and piracy is, as in English, also the term for sea-based robbers.

Many years ago back in Scotland I used very regularly buy pirate stuff at the Barras in Glasgow, back when the internet meant Prestel and a 12/75 modem, so hopping on my bike for a thrash up to Glasgow at the weekends for a visit to the friendly dealers was always a pleasant way to pass the time.
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It’s difficult trying to work out the meaning from the results of a questionnaire into Japanese people’s understanding of English computer-related technical terms, so I’ll just present the results of a survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into computers.

Demographics

Between the 19th and 23rd of March 2009 1,062 members of the goo Research monitors completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.5% of the sample were male, 17.1% in their teens, 18.8% in their twenties, 19.3% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 15.9% in their fifties, and 12.3% aged sixty or older.

That definition of UMPC is not really what I thought. I wouldn’t have said it had to be a tablet, but a thumb-driven keyboard and looking like a seriously-shrunk laptop with built-in mobile phone, with the WILLCOM L4 being the prime example that springs to mind. Incidentally, I’ve played with that beast and it seems to be trying to run Vista in far too little RAM, as even after ten minutes it was still busy whirring the disk trying to start up! I gave up on it at that point.

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Having previously looked at bum-washing toilets, iShare recently shifted their gaze towards public toilets.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 10th of January 2009 412 members of the free email forwarding service CLUB BBQ completed a private online questionnaire. 55.1% of the sample were male, 13.3% in their twenties, 46.8% in their thirties, 32.3% in their forties, and 7.5% in their teens or aged fifty or older.

Note that there is a relatively low percentage of women looking for bum-washing toilets in Q3. Whether this is due to the average women’s toilet being of a higher standard than the men’s or if this is a reflection of women being less trusting of the hygene (see the previous survey) I don’t know!

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The numbers were announced a few days ago, but I don’t know if anyone’s got round to posting them yet in English, so here goes:

The winners of the 2009 New Year Postcard lottery for the Year of the Ox have been announced, and the winning numbers and prizes are as follows. The number to check is the six digit number at the bottom right of the card. Note that some cards do not actually have numbers…

First prize: 345898

Choose any one from a 32 inch Hi-Vision Sharp AQUOS LCD television with Blu-ray recorder, a Panasonic massage chair, a JTB one-night stay voucher at a high-class inn or hotel, a Toshiba pressure cooker rice cooker and high-quality rice, a Canon digital SLR EOS Digital with PIXUS printer and tripod, or a selection of office furniture from Askul. There are 4,155 winning cards.

Second prize: 663829, 908796, or 028962

Choose any one from a Nintendo Wii plus Wii Fit, Omron Karada Scan body monitoring scales with PC link, Casio EX-word electronic dictionary, Canon IXY Digital compact camera, JTB day trip to a hot springs plus meal, or DeLonghi Coffee and Espresso Maker. There are 12,465 winning cards.

Third prize: last four digits 5070

Choose any one from Asakua Nakamuraya rice crackers, Ginza West dry cake, Imperial Hotel baked cake set, Asakusa La Pomme fruit crystal jelly, Dalloyau Four-Secs Demi-Secs cakes, Nakata Foods Kii pickled plums, Asakusa Imahan boiled beef selection, Nissui shark fin and crab canned soup, Hotel New Otani soup set, Shizuoka Green Tea Centre 100 tea bag set, Twinning quality tea bag collection, or Brooke’s 105 coffee filter set. There are 415,420 winning cards.

Fourth prize: last two digits 94 or 46

Otoshidama stamp set - a fifty yen and an eighty yen stamp, pictured above. There are 83,083,880 winning cards.

C Gumi Special prize: 882347 or 223109

Choose any one from Panasonic kitchen rubbish compactor, Bridgestone folding bicycle, or Coleman’s camping set. The “C Gumi” is apparently something to do with carbon offest New Year Postcards.

If you have matched any of these, go to your nearest post office before the 27th of July 2009 and either collect the stamps while you wait, or apply for any of the bigger prizes. The full prize line-up can be seen here. I haven’t checked my cards yet, but how did you get on?

But wait…

As a separate promotion, Megane Ichiba is offering their own lottery for money off a pair of specs. Top prize is for 018900, 5 yen for a pair of glasses up to the value of 18,900 yen. The last five digits of 39189 gives you 10,000 yen off, the last four digits of 0801 gives you 5,000 yen off, last two digits of 33 or 77 gives you 1,500 yen off, and a last digit of 2, 5, 6, or 8 gives you 1,000 yen off! Only one card per pair of glasses, though, may be used.

The people over at Strapya have come up with the latest innovation in Japanese space age technology to allow you to attach a cute (or otherwise) strap to your iPhone or other holeless mobiles with what they claim is their “long time dreaming item for everyone who loves cell phone straps”.

OK, it’s just a stick-on button, but at 210 yen (US$2.16 or so) for not one but two holes, you cannot go wrong.

Since I’m selling you stuff, I’d like to mention the following cases:

They seem very popular in Japan amongst the iPhone users I see.

Slowly but surely online ticket purchase in Japan is expanding. This recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Inc into the very topic of online ticket purchase showed that the majority of internet users do use it for tickets too. Note that this survey excludes travel ticket purchases.

Demographics

Over the 16th and 17th of October 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were female, and 20.0% were in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

Recently most of the cinemas around me are offering online ticket purchase, not just for the full-price (over-priced!) seats, but also for the special ladies’ days and once a month 1,000 yen days, and judging by how fast the seats sell out, they are proving rather popular. The Toho cinema chain even offers a bilingual site, except for the most important page as linked, finding your cinema!

My wife uses Ticket Pia, but come the sale date for theatre tickets the servers get battered and the telephone becomes a quicker (or less slow, should I say, 30 minutes instead of an hour) way to get hold of the seats.
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Just a quick note to any of my readers who might be docomo users but have missed the news. From the day after tomorrow (1st of October 2008) docomo introduce their “pake-hodai double” flat-rate packet charge. Their English site is rather out of date, but the Japanese page has the details. Basically rather than the mess of plans they had before there is now a simple sliding scale of charges just like the other providers have. For 1,029 yen you get 12,250 packets (about 1.5 megabytes), then each additional 128 byte packet costs 0.084 yen until you get to 52,500 packets (6.7 megs), where it tops off at 4,410 yen. The one point of note is that if you use a full browser (Mobile Explorer, Opera, etc) it doesn’t top off until 5,985 yen, but don’t ask me what happens if you mix both types of packet! So, the end-points are the same if you are a heavy data user, but this is the best plan for light, but not too light, users.

You can apply through your mobile phone, via the My docomo site, or in person at any docomo shop.

However, using your phone as a modem for your computer is still out of scope of the new plan, so get an e-mobile data card instead!

You may have read the news about Bletchley Park being in financial difficulties, with the risk of losing the home of the very first digital computer and the centre for wartime code-breaking.

My father worked there, and now I’m working with people from an organisation spawned from there of cryptography for peaceful purposes. They are looking for donations, so please join me in sending a few pounds there:

Donate more than £50 and they’ll send you a T-shirt. Thanks!

Not that this has anything to do with surveys, but it gave me a laugh:

This giant Japanese emoticon has been naturally formed on the slopes of the 2,210 metres high Kumagetake mountain in Hokkaido. Mr Kikuchi, the person who first spotted it three years ago as the snows naturally melt in August, took the photo from the top of the nearby 2,291 metre high Asahidake mountain.

The full story in Japanese may be found here.

A number of Japanese blogs are publishing what purports to be a confidential memo from SoftBank on the pricing plan for the new 3G iPhone; I found it at Uhyohyo no hyo. Assuming the memo to be genuine, what they are offering is as follows.

New Super Bonus

The “New Super Bonus” is a special iPhone-only tariff. For the handset, the price is a stunning 61,920 yen, payable in 24 monthly installments of 2,580 yen. However, with a special discount of 1,780 yen per month, that takes the price down to the Steve Jobs-promised under $200 level of 19,200 yen, 800 yen per month. Next we have the basic packages of White Plan and S! Basic Pack, 980 yen and 315 yen, for free calls outwith 9pm to 1am to any other SoftBank phone and basic mail and web access fees respectively.

iPhone-only Platinum Pack

With the above covering the basic facilities, next there is the data plans. First is Platinum Pack 1, offering unlimited Yahoo! Mail and MobileMe mail for 1,800 yen per month. Next is Platinum Pack 2, offering unlimited Safari-based browsing for 6,800 yen per month.

Release dates

The 8GB SoftBank iPhone will be released on the 11th of July, the 16GB towards the end of July. Pricing for the 16GB version is yet to be decided.

Adding it all up

The above sums up to a total charge of 10,695 yen per month, but, and it’s a big but, no free minutes to other service providers and no free calls from 9 pm to 1 am. A 300 free minutes plan, for instance, costs 8,190 yen per month.