世論 What Japan Thinks

As a professional blogger (perhaps) my requirements for a blogging service are very different from the average person, so I do find it a little hard to relate to this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Inc into blogging.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 21st of November 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor panel completed an internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 by sex, and 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.

In Q1 I think the amount of people reading commercial blogs is rather low, but I suspect it might be that because people are not seeing the URL as megacorp.com/blog, they assume that places are just hobby blogs, not commercial enterprises.

Most of the Japanese blogs, particularly the personal blogs, make Facebook look tasteful.
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Own brands, or house brands as I think they are known as in the USA, or private brands as they are known in Japan, are the supermarket’s own label items that are sold cheaper than the household brand names. To see what Japan thinks of them, MyVoice performed a survey into own brand products.

Demographics

Over the first five days on November 2008 15,510 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 2% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 36% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older.

I try to keep away from own brands in Japan, as I’ve not had very good experiences with them, on the whole. Daiei do fake Kit-Kats, for instance. Their plain ones just don’t have the right chocolate or the crispiness in the wafer, and their flavoured ones are downright nasty!

I think I remember back in the UK there was a web site that listed which own brands were repackaged famous brands; I wonder if such a service exists over here?
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This recent survey from iShare looked at cinemas, touching on where I went for my first date with my wife, the cinema, which is actually a really poor place to choose, but that’s another matter altogether!

Demographics

Between the 12th and 14th of November 2008 just 404 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.7% of the sample were male, 13.6% in their twenties, 47.8% in their thirties, 27.7% in their forties, and 10.9% in their teens or aged fifty or older.

Note that for Q1 there are two reasons why women go to the movies more; first there are more women with the free time to go, and second most cinemas have a “Ladies’ Day” once per week where they charge 1,000 yen per ticket for the ladies. Us men only have the first of the month to get our cheap tickets, although I have seen one cinema, Movix Rokko, that also has a Men’s Day.

Two days I also signed up for a Toho Cinema Mastercard that promises to give one free movie for every six, including movies watched using advance discount tickets.
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Here’s a quick second dose of goo Ranking for today, this time they asked women what words of faint praise are they not sure if they should be happy to hear.

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 was a female-only survey, only the 554 women answered.

Pictured above is the top answer, a Heian beauty (well, I think she’s from the Heian period!), to let you decide whether it is a compliment or not.

Photo from whatsound on flickr
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This week’s fun from goo Ranking is a look at the secrets of keeping that newly-wed feeling going, for both men and women.

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. I’m not sure if unmarried people were excluded or asked to imagine what they should do.

Looking at the men’s list, I know to my cost that number two is very, very important, but I’m not sure that number ten is really advisable as a general rule!

Talking of newly-weds, one of my Japanese colleagues recently got married, and shortly afterwards went off to a work drinking party where the long-time married guys were giving him advice. The key was to be really selfish for the first month so that the ground rules get established, as being too cooperative straight off the bat would only lead to trouble further down the line!
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Since I started running an ad blocker (Ad Muncher), I don’t see any advertisements in search results. However, the use of such software was not investigated in this recent survey published on japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research into the topic of internet advertising. This is the first in a regular (monthly, presumably) series.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 20th of November 2008 1,091 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.2% of the sampe were male, 16.7% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, and 27.8% aged fifty or older.

Note that this report concentrated on search results advertising, but the full survey covered many more kinds of internet advertising.

As you might have noticed, I’ve started with contextual advertisements in my RSS feed. Perhaps next month’s survey might cover them, but given the low figures for RSS usage, I don’t hold out much hope!
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It’s time for another installment of the goo Research mobile phone upgrade needs survey, the 41st in the series of monthly looks at people’s upgrade plans. This time one question looks at the Autumn and Winter 2008 models, with all three major carriers having just released, or being in the process of releasing, new models.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 14th of November 2008 exactly 1,000 members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.2% of the sample were female, 1.1% in their teens. 18.9% in their twenties. 38.3% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, and 16.5% aged fifty or older.

In Q1 it is interesting to note that SoftBank is down a couple of percentage points compared to the average level reported, however this might just be a sampling blip for this survey.

I currently have no plans to upgrade, although on Sunday I might look at a shop I know that should be selling this summer’s models at knock-down prices as most of the new phones from docomo are minor cosmetic revisions of the summer phones; Panasonic has added a two-way keyboard to go from a P906i to a P01-A, Sharp an 8 megapixel camera differentiating their SH-01A from the SH906i, and NEC have a fancy ball joint on their N-01A.

I have my eye on the Sharp SH-04A smartphone, not out until February or March 2009, as I was tempted to jump ship to Willcom for their Sharp 03 earlier this year. However, I’ll have to wait and see how they price it, but I’m not terribly hopeful of getting a decent deal.
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If you have been following the Japanese blogs or news wires this week, you surely must have seen headlines like – well, I thought I saw headlines, but they now seem to have disappeared! Anyway, there was quite a bit of fuss about 53% of Japanese seeing public safety problems due to an increase in tourism, but what is the truth behind that headline? Read the full details from the survey by the Cabinet Office Japan into Tourism Nation Japan and the Japan Tourism Agency.

Demographics

3,000 adults from all over the country were randomly selected from resident registers, and they were visited for face-to-face interviews between the 16th and 26th of October 2008. 1,853 people, or 61.8%, were available and completed the questionnaire. A breakdown by age and sex was not presented, however.

Note that the questions below were part of a bigger survey on other unreported topics.

Q3 is the question that has sparked the controversy, with the negative answers being singled out. My personal opinion is that since the increase in tourism is mostly from Korea and China, countries with none-too-friendly a view of Japan, and the Chinese especially have a reputation for being ill-mannered, and they are the biggest foreign criminal element in Japan, I can see one reason why the figure is high. Of course, one has to contrast that with the equally large percentage who expect the increase in tourists to decrease such prejudice through mutual understanding.
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I’ve moved (or more correctly, Google told me I have to move!) my RSS feed to http://feedproxy.google.com/WhatJapanThinks, and I have signed up for advertisements within the feed.

For posts over 100 words or so you should see one Google ad at the bottom. I’ll run them for a month and if they aren’t doing much, I’ll ditch them. Hope you don’t mind. If you notice any problems, please give me a shout.

Thanks,
Ken Y-N

I remember last time I was looking for an electronic book survey two came along at once, and this time too I have seen a couple in quick succession, so I’ll again double them up. Both surveys were reported on by japan.internet.com, and the first was on electronic books and conducted by iBridge Research Plus, and the second on book purchasing online and conducted by Marsh Inc.

Demographics

For the iBridge survey, between the 30th of October and the 1st of November 2008 300 members of the iBridge monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.3% of the sample were female, 16.0% in their twenties, 39.7% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 11.3% in their fifties, and 5.7% aged sixty or older. For the Marsh survey, between the 31st of October and the 4th of November 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were male, 20.0% 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.

In Q2 from iBridge, 青空文庫, Aozora Bunko, Blue Sky Library, is a great place to find stuff to read, although the formatting could do with some work to be more friendly to modern browsers that can display readings of kanji over the characters rather than inline after them. However, this is a list of viewers for Aozora Bunko. The last book I read from there was Kenji Miyazawa’s Night on the Galactic Railroad, which is a nice short story for intermediate-level students. I also don’t understand why they restricted the question to PC users, since as can be seen from the viewer page, there are suitable readers for almost everything including an iPhone. Do any of my iPhone using readers want to do a road test of these packages?
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