世論 What Japan Thinks

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Although Observing Japan beat me to the punch by already presented extracts from this survey, I will, as is my wont, present the full results of a look by the Cabinet Office Japan at the SDF and defense.

Demographics

Between the 15th and 25th of January 2009 1,781 randomly selected members of the public aged 20 or older completed a face-to-face survey. Initially, 3,000 people were selected, but 40.6%, or 1,219 people, did not take part due to having moved, not being in, refusing, etc. Of those who took part, 52.0% were female, 8.5% in their twenties, 13.9% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 20.6% in their fifties, 23.0% in their sixties, and 18.0% aged seventy or older. 27.5% lived near a military facility, 69.5% did not, and 3.1% didn’t know. However, the definition of “near” was not given.

The SDF, or Self-Defense Force, is the Japanese not-really-a-military-honest force that defends these shores and occasionally forays further afield, such as spending a couple of years hiding in their barracks in Iraq.

Part one of this survey had a good example of trying to get the results one wants from a survey. For Q3 they presented a card describing the relative strengths of Japan’s SDF versus China, Taiwan and the two Koreas, while omitting to say that all the other countries have conscription, and Japan’s spending on hardware makes their smaller number of tanks and planes less significant than it seems by just looking at the raw data.
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With just about every phone available in Japan and built within the last two year able to support Flash (the iPhone being one notable exception), this survey from Point On Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, looking at mobile phone wallpaper reveals a significant percentage of people using Flash even as their mobile’s idle screen background.

Demographics

On the 16th of March 2009 exactly 1,000 mobile phone-using members of the Point On Research monitor group completed a private mobile phone-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and feamle, 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties. For this survey 47.4% of the respondents were with au by KDDI, 42.0% with docomo, 10.5% with SoftBank, and 0.1% with other carriers. This split seems odd to me – 45:35:20 is the usual ratio, and their own monitor demographics page illustrates a 39.7:43.0:33.4 ratio, so I don’t know what is going on here!

Regarding the headline, overall it is just 6.3% of the total sample prepared to lay out cash for just a background, but looking at it as a quarter of a quarter sounds somehow larger! However, I would add a note of caution that many may not be directly paying, but instead may have a monthly subscription to a themed site (like a Sanrio or Disney site full of static and dynamic backgrounds, email templates and emoji icons, etc) with an all-you-can-eat or points-based model.

My phone just has a boring old static picture.
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emoji, literaly “picture characters”, are the small graphical icons that fill (or litter, depending on your point of view!) many Japanese mobile phone email messages, but within Japan the three main mobile phone service providers have all got different encoding representations for them and support different sets of emoji, meaning that although they all perform encoding translation when exchanging emails, it can be a bit hit-or-miss as to whether or not the message gets through. Next, add into the mix the iPhone with support for at least four different kinds of mail (SMS, SoftBank’s own iPhone-specific mailbox, webmail, and third-party POP3-based mailboxes), and even within the one device a lot of trickery needs to take place to make the experience consistent for the user.

Google have recently been ramping up their advertising of Gmail in Japan as they currently languish with the also-rans in the popularity stakes. One aspect of their advertising has been to highlight their support of emoji, but the lack of a standard encoding method makes everything a bit more complicated than it need be.

Thus, engineers from Google and Apple have got together to try to propose an encoding for these emoji (they have identified 674 of them!) that can be added to the official standard ISO/IEC 10646, as can be seen in this document, Proposal for Encoding Emoji Symbols. The proposal uses a few of my translations as reference documents, which is nice.

Here’s an interesting survey on portable audio players from iShare showing how sold-state music has muscled out MD players, the leader from just three and a half years ago.

Demographics

Between the 25th of February and the 2nd of March 2009 417 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 40.0% in their twenties, 26.4% in their thirties, and 33.6% in their forties.

I don’t own any portable audio players – well, actually my mobile phone can play music, but I’ve never used the feature. My wife has an MD player lying around that she never uses, but I have a cunning plan for it that doesn’t involve music… Right at the moment I could use a portable player as there is a rather drunk or mentally disturbed guy muttering away to himself as I’m trying to concentrate on translating, but I digress. On to the survey!
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With the launch of UQ Communications’ WiMAX service in Japan on the 26th of February, Marsh Inc performed a survey, reportd on by japan.internet.com, into awareness of WiMAX.

Demographics

Over the 5th and 6th of March 2009 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Exactly 50.0% of the sample were male, 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 14.7% in their fifties, and 5.3% aged sixty or older.

WiMAX is, of course, err, I don’t really know – something to do with next generation high-speed wireless is about the extent of my knowledge, so instead have a look at a story on Asiajin to see a bit more about what it is.

Q1 is a bit surprising with only 63.0% aware of WiFi. The complete question was not reported, so I wonder if there was something a bit strange about the phrasing.

Q1SQ2 seems a bit strange as the implication is that over 40% of the sample learnt about UQ WiMAX between the asking of Q1 and Q1SQ2, so for this question too there must have been some strange phrasing.
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Two silly surveys today, and this one too leaves me scratching my head and wondering if it really is interesting or not… From goo Ranking, it’s what people find peculiar about Tokyo.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 26th of January 2009 1,071 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. 51.8% of the sample were male, 6.9% in their teens, 14.3% in their twenties, 28.9% in their thirties, 27.8% in their forties, 11.3% in their fifties, and 10.8% 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.

One surprise here is that “lots of foreigners” does not appear in the answer!
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Here’s one of these silly surveys, from goo Ranking of course, that is either interesting or incomprehensible, or both… The subject was in what situations were people just putting on an act, for both men and women.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 26th of January 2009 1,071 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. 51.8% of the sample were male, 6.9% in their teens, 14.3% in their twenties, 28.9% in their thirties, 27.8% in their forties, 11.3% in their fifties, and 10.8% 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’m useless at acting, so I’ve got into trouble for at least the first three for men, and as for pretending to be drunk, it’s far easier to just be drunk.

Does anyone understand what saying one’s full up on a first date really means? I could understand for men if it was just to get out of having to order and pay for another course, but it’s higher ranked for women.
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I’m more of an SD card person myself, so I’ve never actually owned a USB thumb device, but this recent survey repotred on by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research into said USB memory found that I am very much in the minority in Japan.

Demographics

Between the 25th of February and the 3rd of March 2009 1,075 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 15.8% in their fifties, and 11.9% aged sixty or older.

Talking of USB memory, if you have more than you can plug into your PC at one time, Strapya has a R2D2 and Darth Vader USB hub!

I read last month about an interesting (for “interesting” read “useless”) USB memory-centred security system for PCs from NTT; they encrypt the hard drive, then select random parts of the encrypted files to write out to USB memory, the theory being that the PC without the USB memory or vice versa is useless. However, I cannot actually think of valid threats that this defends against, unless the memory dongle has a wired or wireless tether, and if there’s a tether you don’t need the writing to USB memory, and all it does is introduce another point of failure, especially as a detached USB drive is easy to lose.

I can guess that it’s patented, as sadly that seems the major driver behind many developments at my employer at least.
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With almost every day bringing more bad news of how the economic situation at both home and abroad is deteriorating, this recent survey from DIMSDRIVE Research into the economy is most timely.

Demographics

Between the 28th or January and the 11th of February 2009 10,233 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.2% of the sample were male, 1.0% in their teens, 12.5% in their twenties, 33.2% in their thirties, 29.9% in thri forties, 16.1% in their fifties, and 7.3% in their sixties. By occupation, 35.2% were full-time regular employees, 19.4% housewives, 11.3% part-time or casual, 7.6% unemployed, 6.9% self-employed, 6.1% contract workers or temps, 3.6% civil servants, 2.8% students, 2.6% freelance, 2.2% senior management or board-level, 0.9% other governmental organisation employees, and 1.4% in other jobs.

We’ve had major changes at the office due to our sales falling off a cliff. Overtime has been cut (this actually is a good thing, IMO), bonuses cut too due to a complex link between overtime and bonuses, management-level pay and expense account cuts, etc, etc. However, the best thing they could do is to address Warm Biz and Cool Biz as more than just a slogan and actually put some effort into ensuring that the air conditioning runs efficiently. How are you doing?

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I’m not sure if the phrasing in the story title is familiar to many, but in the UK where Harlequin novels are called Mills and Boon, the popular generic term for such style of romantic novels is the bodice-ripper. Anyway, that title serves to give away the results of a survey conducted by iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com into mobile phone novels.

Demographics

On the 2nd of March 2008 300 female members of the Research Plus monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 25.0% of the sample were in their twenties, 49.0% in their thirties, and 26.0% in their forties.

I’ve never read a mobile phone novel or even a novel on a mobile phone for that matter, although when I last translated a similar survey I mentioned that there are many readers for reading books on most types of mobiles, but like many other things I talk about I’ve never quite had time to try it out!
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