世論 What Japan Thinks

With the demise of HD DVD in February 2008 as a format for recorded media, ths recent suvery from goo Research reported on by japan.internet.com into video devices showed some surprising results.

Demographics

Between the 27th and 30th of November 2008 1,081 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.3% in their thrties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 11.9% aged sixty or older.

I really do find the HD DVD drive ownership stunningly high! It would be interesting to investigate exactly why, and whether or not these drives are still in use or just gathering dust.

Do any of my readers have HD DVDs, and if so, how do you find it?
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Yahoo! JAPAN recently annouced the results of a number of their “Best of 2008″, and one of the categories was what rare products people just couldn’t resist click through to. Voting was (as far as I understand) open to all registered users of Yahoo! JAPAN. The items were collected from all the Hot Items selected by Yahoo! Shopping between January and October of this year.

If you do like the look of Marimokkori, you can in fact buy him here.
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For this week’s lighter look at opinions, goo Ranking investigated what makes people feel are men’s status symbols, for both men and women.

Demographics

Between the 24th and 26th of September 2008 1,044 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.6% of the sample were male, 5.8% in their teens, 12.7% in their twenties, 32.3% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, 12.3% in their fifties, and 9.3% 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.

The car being number one should be no suprise to anyone, but I’m surprised with a watch being so high, higher than tailored suits, but perhaps that reflects a conservatism in Japanese dress.

My car is a train, I work in computers, my degree’s from a university probably no-one in Japan’s heard of, and my watch cost 10,000 ANA air miles. From the women’s list, I can only claim to have 7 and 8 as marks of status!
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Just a very quick translation for today, a look with japan.internet.com at a survey conducted by iBridge into public libraries and the internet.

Demographics

On the first of December 2008 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.7% of the sample were female, 13.0% in their twenties, 39.0% in their thirties, 33.0% in their forties, 9.0% in their fifties, and 6.0% in their sixties.

Note that internet services here are not public-access terminals in the library, but an external web site for the library.

I’ve never actually been to my local library, but I have checked out their web page for opening hours.
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Yahoo! JAPAN recently annouced the results of a number of their “Best of 2008″, and one of the categories was the most clicked-through headline from Yahoo! News. The data was collected from all headlines displayed through Yahoo! NEWS between the 1st of November 2007 and 31st of October 2008.

You’ll notice that all of them are basically domestic stories, and most of the topics are either (or both) entertainment or death-related. You will note that nothing about politics, such as the minor matter of a change in prime ministers appears in the list, but in Japan’s defense I wonder if because these topics might have multiple reports, the clicks per story get diluted.

Click-through each link to find some English reporting on the story.
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I wonder how the fear of impending collapse in a number of the car manufacturers will affect their investments into research and development into alternative power sources. However, this survey from MyVoice into electric cars was conducted before the bottom fell out of the manufacturing business, so such worries are not reflected in the results.

Demographics

Over the first five days of November 2008 15,382 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 14% in their twenties, 36% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% aged fifty or older.

Although I’m not convinced yet of the overall relative environmental impact of electric vehicles, they go some way to at least displacing pollution. Hybrids like the Toyota Prius are a nice ride once you get used to the gearbox, though, but I can’t see me giving up the train in the forseeable future.
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I hope most of my fellow readers resident in Japan have got their New Year greeting (nengajou) postcards ready, as time’s running out! To see how you should be approaching what I think is an important (in some aspects) custom, this detailed survey from MacroMill Inc looked at 2009 New Year Greetings.

Demographics

Over the 25th and 26th of November 2008 624 members of the MacroMill monitor group completed an internet-based private questionnaire. The group was split exactly 50:50 male and female overall and in each age group, and 16.7% in each of these age groups, 15 to 19 years old, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and sixty or older.

I’m nearly ready to go; I still have to import the addresses from my old postcard software to the new one, which involves a wee bit of Excel CSV file massage, but barring accidents I’ll be printing them out at the weekend. As for electronic greetings, I think it feels cheap to me, and unless I know it’s someone sending it in addition to a postcard, I feel hard done by.

In Q5, I’m surprised that what I thought would be the main reason for sending electronic greetings, saving money, didn’t feature as a distinct answer, and neither did some ecology-related reason.
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Just a quick note that the editors of the online magazine Tokyo × Work × Life have decided to choose me as their very own Blog of the Week for this week. Just in case you’ve never heard of it before, the website describes itself thus:

Tokyo × Work × Life aims to help foreigners living in Japan (Tokyo) to learn more deeply about it, supplying information from various angles to make possible a more comfortable lifestyle.

It’s a nicely-done web site, but still a bit new, so I’m looking forward to seeing lots of useful content for living in Japan, Tokyo in particular.

But, to my English teaching readers, don’t all start patting yourselves on the back yet, as this survey from iShare on foreign languages also reveals that less than one in fifteen feel capable of stringing more than a few words together.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 25th of November 2008 430 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.5% of the sample were male, 13.3% were in their twenties, 54.4% in their thirties, 23.5% in their forties, and 8.8% in their teens or fifty or older.

Note that at least those in their twenties and thirties should have studied English for all six years in high school.

One wonders how much degree of racial bias is in the answers of favourite language, as Asian languages are rated much lower than Western ones. On the other hand I do find Chinese and Korean pretty rough on my ears, but then again, German can be too. I wonder, though, why exactly is knowing a language rated as cool? Is it due to perception of difficulty or association with having travelled to countries or moved in circles associated with the language?
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With so many free web-based mail services on offer, a surprising result from a survey conducted by Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into web email was that a number of people do actually pay for it.

Demographics

Between the 29th of November and the 2nd of December 2008 300 people from the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were male, 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.

Unfortunately, this survey did not report what sort of services people were paying for, although perhaps if you paid Marsh some money they’d tell you. I suppose I could say that I pay for two web mail services; one through this web site hosting as I do use the web mail reading facility, and the other is PoBox.com that I use for mail forwarding my private email, although I don’t use their web mail, which is an additional charge.
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