世論 What Japan Thinks

Honestly, it’s not just because I’ve recently launched a Japanese emoticon and smiley dictionary that I’m picking up a number of surveys like this one from Point On Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into mobile phone email use, with the focus for this report on textual and graphical emoticons.

Demographics

On the 15th of February 2009 exactly 1,000 mobile phone users from the Point On Research monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were female, 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.

Even though I have produced the above-mentioned emoticon dictionary, I don’t actually use text emoticons in my mobile email! Most of the time it is the built-in emoji graphical icons. I’d use more decomail (larger-sized, on the whole, animated gifs) but my phone is one of the first models to support them, so the user interface is pretty awkward to say the least.

I don’t get enough mobile emails to use any other pattern than immediate reply, but my blog email is another matter altogether…
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I’ve not actually been into a clothes shop to get stuff for myself for a couple of years, although the last time I did go it was to a Uniqlo, the shop that comes out way on top in this recent survey from MyVoice into casual wear shops.

Demographics

Over the first five days of January 2009 13,923 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 13% in their twenties, 36% in their thirties, 31% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older.

I usually buy casual wear at Passport, as they have a nice (read “cheap”) line of hannari tofu clothes. Otherwise I leave the casual shopping up to the wife, who uses mail order on the whole.
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Valentine’s Day may have seen a number of weddings proposed, so it is quite timely too look at this recent survey conducted by iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com into engagement rings and other associated matters.

Demographics

On the 9th of February 2009 300 unmarried women from the iBridge monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. 50.7% of the sample were in their twenties and 49.3% in their thirties.

As I typed the introduction paragraph I started wondering if Valentine’s Day (or the counterpart White Day) is such a significant date for proposing marriage in Japan. Indeed, that would be a very interesting topic to have a search for, when and how people proposed. The only survey I can remember doing on that topic found that a depressingly-high 30.3% of people in their twenties find a shotgun prodding them down the aisle!

We chose our engagement and wedding rings together, with wifey having the final say, of course, as I’d probably have been too stingey if I’d been let loose on my own. We bought from Exelco, who are relatively reasonable as they sell direct, and sell diamonds and the rings separately, so there’s much more freedom to get something that fits your budget.
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With the date for the 12,000 yen handout to all residents of Japan getting closer (perhaps…), here’s a short look at opinions on the cash handout in a survey conducted by goo Research in conjunction with the Mainichi Shimbun.

Demographics

Betwen the 23rd and 25th of January 2009 1,056 members of the goo Research monitor panel aged 20 or older completed a private internet-based questionnaire. No further demographic information was given.

This whole cash handout business has been nothing but a farce since it was first announced. Originally it was going to be a tax cut, but that does not benefit non-taxpayers, so it became free money. However, some of the issues that have come up are the method of distribution – currently it is envisaged that everyone has to go to their local city office, but that means cities need to employ lots of extra staff, and it’s been estimated that another 25% or so overhead is needed to get it distributed. Then the Prime Minister himself first said he wouldn’t take it, then he was saying he hadn’t ruled out that he would, then he would, and I think the latest situation is that he is undecided again.

One of the blogs I regularly read on Japanese politics talked about this in detail; a representative article on this matter from GlobalTalk 21 is here.
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Today is Valentine’s Day, so let’s have a look at two silly wee surveys from goo Ranking, asking women what they find tough on Valentine’s Day, and what differences they notice in men on or just before Valentine’s Day.

Demographics

Note that the obligatory chocolates for everyone in the office are basically a chore rather than an expression of gratitude, as with many other situations where gifts must be passed, the feelings of thanks have disappeared to be replaced by just a sense of formality.

For your enjoyment, here is a recap of the Valentine surveys I’ve looked at over the years:

• Valentine present reception FAIL!
• Valentine present giving FAIL
• Miserable Valentine’s Day
• Improving your chocolate reception chances
• Macromill Valentine’s 2009
• Macromill Valentine’s 2007

Oh, and Watashi to Tokyo had a list of men’s favourite everyday chocolate snacks.

Heart Warmy picture from Robert Sanzalone on flickr.
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Following up on yesterday’s broken digital cameras, today we look with goo Research again, reported on by japan.internet.com, into hard disk faults.

Demographics

Over the 27th and 28th of January 2009 1,092 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.7% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.7% in their twenties, 21.2% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 15.3% in their fifties, and 12.3% aged sixty or older.

I had a hard disk crash a few years ago and lost perhaps 20% of my photo collection. I now use Vista’s built-in backup tool to do weekly backups, but I’m not convinced at all that it is backing up everything it should be, and it has a funny habit of spewing out errors on boot-up on days it isn’t running. Can anyone recommend a cheap or free backup to DVD software package for Vista?
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Here’s one of these subjects for a survey that make me scratch my head and wonder why they really asked this. This time japan.internet.com reported on a survey by goo Research into broken digital cameras.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 27th of January 2009 1,083 members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% of the sample were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

As all I have is a cheap and cheerful compact digitial camera I’ve never thought that it might have the facility for a firmware upgrade; given the rate of model turnover buying a new camera is the only way of getting a new version! I’ve of course heard about upgrades for digital SLRs, but let me check the support web site for my camera – oh, they do have firmware upgrades even for the compact cameras! It doesn’t tell you what they do, however…
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Following up on my look at women’s Valentine gift-giving FAILs, here is goo Ranking again looking at what men were troubled by receiving on Valentine’s Day.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 22nd of December 2008 1,039 members of the goo Research monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The reported sex split was exactly 50.00% male and 50.00% female, a figure that one will instantly see is wrong, so for the sake of argument I’ll round it up to 520 females and down to 519 males. 7.6% of the sample were in their teens, 15.6% in their twenties, 28.0% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 10.3% 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. Note also this question was for men only, as the day is mainly for women to give stuff to men.

Last year my female boss (I hope she doesn’t read my blog!) gave all the guys in the office a huge bar of Wonka chocolate which was a FAIL on a number of counts – too big, too sweet, and pretty disgusting, quite frankly. Wifey has never had a giving FAIL (I hope she is reading this!) and last year I got a cuddly toy and some Hello Kitty boxers.
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Maybe I’ve just been in Japan too long, but I’ve recently noticed train phone manners going downhill, with talking on the phone being an obvious hate, but also people who leave their keypress beep on irritate me a lot. These feelings seemed to be shared by most people, according to this recent survey conducted by Point On Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into mobile use onboard trains.

Demographics

On the 2nd of February 2009 exactly 1,000 mobile phone using members of the Point On monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. Exactly 50.0% of the sample were female, 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% aged fifty or older.

When I go abroad this sort of behaviour doesn’t really bother me, perhaps because I am accepting that it is the social norm for the country I am visiting, or perhaps it is because I’m often trying to sleep on my daily commute.

The picture accompanying this post is a Tokyo manners poster, one of a series of posters they have produced, with today’s statistic added for a more accurate representation of the situation!
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Here’s an interesting survey from iShare that answers the questions that many westerners ask when they see the average Japanese mobile phone email littered with kaomoji smilies and decomail animations, simply “Why?”

Demographics

Over the 28th and 29th of January 2009 668 users of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.1% of the sample were male, 12.6% in their twenties, 46.1% in their thirties, 33.4% in their forties, 6.7% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their teens or sixty or older.

Just in case you missed last night’s post, you can find about 8,000 (and growing) kaomoji facemarks at evoticon. Other technical terms included in this post are emoji, simple icons, and decomail, HTML templated mail, including DIY text animation.
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