世論 What Japan Thinks

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.

Like I did, you’re probably wondering what on earth a Range Up product is. It is another made-up Japanese-style English (和製英語, wasei eigo) that means microwave-ready food that can be stored at room temperature. Range is from the Japanese for microwave oven, denshi range, and Up is probably from heat up. So, with the definitions out the way, let up proceed to this look by MyVoice at said Range Up products.

Demographics

Over the first five days of January 2009 13,771 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teens, 13% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 31% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older.

I’ve not eaten these kinds of dishes myself, in fact I can’t remember seeing them ever, although I did have a friend who swore by the individual portions of rice, as they were just right for single people who couldn’t be bothered with the whole bother of a rice cooker. In fact, one will not that rice-based dishes feature very prominantly in Q2.
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As a sort-of follow-up on my earlier post on Wikipedia’s dominance of Japanese search engines, here’s a survey from Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com into Wikipedia.

Demographics

On the 13th of January 2009 300 members of the Research Plus monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.3% of the sample were male, 15.7% in their twenties, 37.0% in their thirties, 32.3% in their forties, 11.7% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties.

It’s interesting to see that only a third of the Wikipedia users saw the request for donations as it was a very large banner, indicating a degree of ad blindness even higher than for contextual advertising.
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As the author of the Wikipedia nofollow WordPress plugin, I’m always on the lookout for stories about how Google and Wikipedia are getting on with each other. Recently I spotted this story on The Register about Encyclopedia Britannica complaining that Google ranks Wikipedia too highly. Naturally EB would complain about such a thing, but what particularly caught my eye was mention of an experiment Nick Carr, a member of the Brittanica’s board of editorial advisors, performed, looking up ten diverse topics in Google. Then, all 10 appeared on the first page of Google with two number ones. The current situation is all are now top of the pile, so I wondered what happens if I try the equivalent phrases in Japanese. I translated the terms by accessing the English Wikipedia then switching to Japanese, and using the article title. Also, since Google and Yahoo! battle it out for dominance in Japan, I used both engines, with the following results:

There are five non-first places in Yahoo!,something one can take as a good or a bad sign. For agriculture, ahead of Wikipedia in 4th place was Yahoo!’s own encyclopedia, an electronic version of a popular paper dictionary. The internet only making 17th place in Japanese is another curious outcome.

I’ve taken the plunge and moved WJT up to WordPress 2.7. Hopefully everything is OK, but if you notice anything funny, please shout!

With the economic gloom building, here is a timely look with MyVoice at economising in daily life.

Demographics

Over the first five days of January 2009 13,932 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed an online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% were in their teens, 14% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older.

I was saving money on most things last year, and this year will see further savings given the possibility of all overtime being stopped and having had the more immediate shock of getting a 20,000 yen gas bill for last month.

Of course, rather than economising I want more income (AdSense has died a death!), and to that end I have three new web site ideas in the pipeline and one renewal of an older property, but more of that in other posts!

Finally, before I forget, be sure to check out Nihon Hacks for how to save money in Japan.
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Well, not really secret, but what people do at home that they don’t want others to see, for both men and women, a ranking survey performed by goo Ranking.

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.

I’d probably have to say seeing me in my casual clothes (hmm, that didn’t feature anywhere in the answers!) as many of them are selected by my wife or just hand-me-downs – I’m currently wearing a Kewpie sweatshirt under a hoodie with some rather dubiously unmasculine images on the back, so whenever I go to the mailbox or to throw out rubbish I pray no-one sees me!

The photo at the head of the article comes from cellardoore on flickr.
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Despite SoftBank, WillCom and E-Mobile offering free voice calls to other customers of the same company (given certain conditions and/or payments), and au and docomo offering free calls amongst families, this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Point On Research into mobile phone voice calls shows not too much take-up of such offers.

Demographics

On the 18th of January 2009 1,000 mobile phone users from the Point On monitor group completed a private internet-based survey, although there is no information to say if they use mobile internet or computer-based. The sample was exactly 50.0% male, 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.

I very rarely make voice calls – even several times a month is too high a frequency for me. I only ever call my wife, and even though she can call me for free, we just use email as it’s far more practical especially since my commute is 90% inside a train.
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Here’s a bit of an interesting survey from iShare, looking at what Japanese would introduce foreigners to.

Demographics

Between the 23th and 29th of December 2008 709 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.0% of the sample were male, 12.1% in their twenties, 47.5% in their thirties, 30.7% in their forties, 7.6% in their fifties, and 2.0% in their teens or aged sixty or older.

I’d put Osaka higher up the list in Q1, but I’m biased! I’d also put Kanazawa higher, as it’s Kyoto without so many tourists, and I really enjoyed the one time I visited.

I wouldn’t subject anyone to Japanese curry, but I’d put Japanese-style snacks higher. I think that refers to Japanese flavours in Western-style sweets like chestnut Kit-Kats or wasabi (horseradish-like) flavoured crisps, rather than traditional Japanese confectionary based around bean-paste.

Judging by another survey, water-squirting toilets are popular amongst the foreign population, but game arcades and Scissors-Paper-Stone are hardly unique Japanese features. On the other hand, some of the machines in Japanese arcades have to be seen to be believed, so perhaps the first is a good choice!
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