世論 What Japan Thinks

Here’s a bit of a short survey that has rather interesting results; iShare looked at the end of the year Jumbo Lottery.

Demographics

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

First a lottery tip: if you can spare 300 yen, buy just one ticket. This measurably changes your odds from absolutely zero to infinitesimal. Buying a second leaves your odds still infinitesimal, so don’t bother.

Next, the lottery does seem to have a lot of misconceptions surrounding it, mainly focussing on the drawing method and the relatively small first prize, leading many to think that it’s even more of a tax on the innumerate than the average one. However, the term “lottery” is misleading, as most people imagine the pick six from fifty-type schemes that are prevelant in the west, whereas Japan’s is more like a raffle – all the sold tickets go into a hat and winners are drawn from there, so if it is a sell-out all the prizes (in theory) will be claimed.

This year there are 70 first prizes of 200 million yen (roughly 2 million US dollars), 140 almost-first prizes of 50 million yen, 6,930 almost-almost first prizes of 100,000 yen, 140 second prizes of 100 million yen, 700 at 5 million yen, and so on, assuming they sell all 70 blocks of tickets. In total, there are 700 million tickets for sale (about 6 per man, woman and child) for a total value of 210 billion yen. I make that just over 99 billion yen in prize money, or 47.3% of the sales, leaving just under 111 billion yen in the pot. Once television and print advertising, sales overhead, amakudari-inflated old-boy director salaries, and everything else are paid for, that leaves a little bit left over (can anyone point me to figures for administration costs on the lottery?) for good causes, but I have little idea what they fund.

Oh, there’s a headline figure of 300 million yen advertised as the top prize, but I’m not really sure how one ticket can get the extra 100 million.

So, back to the survey.
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[part 1] [part 2]

The Cabinet Office Japan recently conducted a survey looking at diplomacy in Japan. This is a regular yearly survey, and last year I translated it in two parts, here and here.

Demographics

3,000 adult members of the Japanese public were selected at random from resident registries to be interviewed face-to-face between the 9th and 19th of October 2008. From the sample, 1,826 people, or 60.9%, were available and completed the survey. 54.1% of the sample were female, 10.0% were in their twenties, 15.9% in their thirties, 15.6% in their forties, 20.3% in their fifties, 21.9% in their sixties, and 16.3% aged seventy or older. Additionally, 4.6% had lived overseas for more than three months, another 57.3% had travelled overseas, and 38.1% had never been overseas.

The section on North Korea was conducted before the recent news that wouldn’t have surprised many westerns following the story, namely that North Korea finally had enough about Japan going on about the abductees and have said they’ll refuse to recognise Japan at the upcoming 6-party (or should that now be 5-party?) talks due to this issue, a stance that I must agree with, quite frankly. However, Q3 shows the abductees is still the most important issue for the Japanese, but I’d love to see a more detailed survey on why.
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[part 1] [part 2]

The Cabinet Office Japan recently conducted a survey looking at diplomacy in Japan. This is a regular yearly survey, and last year I translated it in two parts, here and here.

Demographics

3,000 adult members of the Japanese public were selected at random from resident registries to be interviewed face-to-face between the 9th and 19th of October 2008. From the sample, 1,826 people, or 60.9%, were available and completed the survey. 54.1% of the sample were female, 10.0% were in their twenties, 15.9% in their thirties, 15.6% in their forties, 20.3% in their fifties, 21.9% in their sixties, and 16.3% aged seventy or older. Additionally, 4.6% had lived overseas for more than three months, another 57.3% had travelled overseas, and 38.1% had never been overseas.

If you have been reading Japan news you may have seen some coverage of this poll, although they only dipped into the first two questions below for the article. There’s a lot of good information in part 2 that has been almost completely ignored by the foreign media, so be sure to check that out too.
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goo Ranking looked recently at from what occupation would one like to have a gocon with, for both women choosing men and men choosing women. A gocon is a dating party, usually consisting of three of four guys and three of four women, with each group usually being work colleagues.

Demographics

Between the 21th and 24th of October 2008 1,056 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were female, 5.0% in their teens, 13.2% in their twenties, 28.4% in their thirties, 31.5% in their forties, 13.1% in their fifties, and 8.8% 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.
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goo Ranking has done a whole series of these questions for each prefecture in Japan, but since this one is about my home prefecture, I thought I’d translate this survey on what comes to mind regarding Hyogo Prefecture.

Demographics

Between the 21th and 24th of October 2008 1,056 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were female, 5.0% in their teens, 13.2% in their twenties, 28.4% in their thirties, 31.5% in their forties, 13.1% in their fifties, and 8.8% 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.

All pictures are from flickr – click the credit column to access the original.
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It seemed to be popular last year, so I thought I’d remind you all that you can buy a lucky bag, or in Japanese, 福袋, fukubukuro, from Strapya filled with 18 cellphone straps to a value of over $130 for just $27 or so (depending on exchange rates), a saving of 80% on the retail price.

Help yourself to a bargain (and help out me) buy picking one up today!

A subject that pops up every so often is the matter of children and cellphone usage, this time conducted by MyVoice.

Demographics

Over the first five days of November 2008 14,671 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 34% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 19% aged fifty or older.

Pictured here is Willcom’s child cellphone from Bandai, the papipo!, with a Tamagochi theme to it. Perhaps it’s just me, but it does look awfully like a toilet seat when folded closed…

In Q3 it’s interesting that in child cellphones, docomo loses out to both au and SoftBank compared to the percentages for adult phone ownership.
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No, not a free offer from me, but some research into 年賀状, nengajou, New Year Postcards conducted by iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com looking in particular at both free advertisement-plastered pre-franked postcards and the SNS mixi’s pay service for sending postcards to virtual friends whilst retaining privacy, a process which I wouldn’t be surprised if they have applied for a patent for.

Demographics

On the 25th of November 2008 300 people from the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were female, 14.3% in their twenties, 37.3% in their thirties, 31.7% in their forties, 10.3% in their fifties, and 6.3% in their sixties.

Looking at the web site giving the cards away (too late, the closing date is past!) it’s actually rather a good idea. The cards have the adverts inside the postcard and can be peeled open, otherwise you get an almost completely blank card for you do draw or print on as desired.

I’ve already ordered and received my Year of the Cow cards; two styles, one with Hello Kitty in a field of cows, the other is just a generic cute cartoon cow design. Both were designed and ordered over the internet, but we’ll be printing out the addresses at home.
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Japan is well-known the world over for being a nation of newspaper readers, so on the surface the headline figure from this survey by DIMSDRIVE Research into newspaper purchase is not too big a surprise. A quick language note – in Japan 新聞, shimbun, is the Japanese for newspaper, which you could probably work out anyway from Q3!

Demographics

Between the 17th of September and the 2nd of October 2008 10,231 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitors completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were female, 1.2% in their teens, 13.4% in their twenties, 34.2% in their thirties, 30.2% in their forties, 14.8% in their fifties, and 6.2% aged sixty or older. By employement status, the three largest percentages were 40.4% full-time company employees, 20.7% homemakers, and 12.4% part-time or casual labour. By household income, 6.6% earned under 2 million yen per year, 19.8% under 4 million yen, 24.4% under 6 million yen, 15.3% under 8 million yen, 9.6% under 10 million yen, and 10.3% over 10 million yen. 14.0% were not saying or didn’t know.

One way that Japanese newspapers keep their print subscriptions up is to limit the amount they publish on their web sites. Most keep stories down to two or three paragraphs, often publishing just newswire articles, and expire them after just a few days.

If anything, the numbers reported here may be lower than actuality, as the third-biggest daily newspaper in Japan, the Seikyo Shimbun, is missing from the list. Whether this and other organisation’s dailies were explicitly excluded is not stated, as for instance the Shimbun Akahata (Red Flag – guess whose that is!) also shifts almost 1.7 million copies per day.

The photo is of Danny Choo being featured in a Japanese newspaper, from his flickr collection. I and many others, I think, are secdretly jealous that he gets such coverage and makes so much dosh just for doing the stuff he loves!
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Well, they are actually called 忘年会, bounenkai, forget the year parties, over here but they serve a similar purpose to said Xmas event. To find out what you shouldn’t do there, goo Ranking had a look at the NG activities at a bounenkai. NG is a commonly-used abbreviation in Japan too, for No Good.

Demographics

Between the 21th and 24th of October 2008 1,056 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were female, 5.0% in their teens, 13.2% in their twenties, 28.4% in their thirties, 31.5% in their forties, 13.1% in their fifties, and 8.8% 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.

Since this is a silly survey, I’ll be a bit freer with the translation today! I also couldn’t be bothered waiting until Sunday to present this.

I hope I can rely on Roaf at Gaijin Tonic to break most of these rules at this year’s bounenkai!

Which reminds me, you can buy drunken salarymen mobile phone charms from Strapya.
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