世論 What Japan Thinks

I’m not really up on the issues myself regarding national testing, but I am against the whole culture of testing in Japan. I am all for publishing the results of regular examinations, but not tests for the sake of tests. However, I would appear to be very much in the minority according to the results of this survey into national educational level testing, conducted by goo Research in conjunction with the Mainichi Shimbun.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 19th of October 2008 1,075 mmbers of the goo Research monitor group aged twenty or older completed a private online questionnaire. No further demographics information was provided.

I’m a bit confused in Q1 why there is an answer “both the school and local authority level”, as it is a trivial task to take the school results and sum them up by area. Also, Q1SQ1 and Q1SQ2 should really be multiple choice questions and there are no “don’t knows”, so I suspect there has been some post-processing of the results for presentation.
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Second only to teeth, smoking is one of my favourite subjects to cover on this blog, so I hope you too enjoy this recent survey from MyVoice on this very subject.

Demographics

Over the first five days of October 2008 14,473 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 14% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older. Note that since the legal smoking age is 20 years old in Japan, no teenagers took part in this survey.

Note that taspo is an identity card that is needed in order to operate most cigarette machines to serve as proof that the person is holding a card issued to someone over 20.
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Here’s a fun survey from goo Ranking that I’d love to hear everyone else’s input on! The looked at what people secretly think they are number one for amongst their friends. Sadly there wasn’t a male/female split!

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.

Apart from obviously being the most handsome amongst my fellow gaijin bloggers, I secretly believe that I put the most effort per post into my blogs compared to you lot of slackers who just slap up a few videos from YouTube mixed in with a bit of Engrish and… Oops, I just remembered that the survey isn’t “Why are your friends all useless?”

What’s your secret boast? Don’t worry, I won’t tell.

(I also didn’t repeat my previous mistake when translating number 3 here)
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I’ve covered similar surveys to this one in the past, which found an unbelievably high three in ten claimed to currently own or have owned a domain (I’ve just now double-checked the source, and my translation is accurate), but this time goo Research found a much more acceptable figure in this survey on one’s own home page, as reported by japan.internet.com.

Research results

Over the 22nd and 23rd of October 2008 1,090 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 16.7% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.0% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 16.0% in their fifties, and 12.0% in their sixties.

Even though .jp is the most popular domain name below, according to GoDaddy it costs $99 per year to register one, but for some reason whatjapanthinks.jp seems to be not for sale, although I cannot find any information why, as whois lookups are failing!

As I said on the previous survey, I think there is a degree of confusion in thinking that http://whatjapanthinks.blogspot.com/ is actually a top-level domain.
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This is quite a surprising set of results for me, but perhaps one factor is a relative reluctance to using credit cards online, although I would have thought banks would be more of a worry? Have a look at these results published on japan.internet.com from a survey conducted by Marsh Inc into online banking.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 28th of October 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Exactly 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.

I’ve always meant to look into online banking – actually, all my UK money is in a bank that is online (talking of HSBC, they finally opened branches in Japan, but the one in Kobe, at least, is after the top end, people with 10 million yen or more to invest – in Japan, but never quite got round to it. I once checked my SMBC balance online, but that’s the extent of it!
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A little bit of politics for you today, as iShare decided to look at awareness of the American presidential election, in particular its effect on Japan.

Demographics

Over the 5th and 6th of November 2008 501 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.9% of the sample were male, 12.6% in their twenties, 48.3% in their thirties, 28.5% in their forties, and 10.6% in their teens or fifty or older. The sample seems to be drawn from a more technology-aware crowd than the average internet user, thus the geeks in the headline.

Just in case you are wondering who (or what) the Nocchi in the headline is, he is Nozomu Sato, a Japanese comedian who looks like Mr Obama, and in fact met him for a brief instant. I predict great things for Nocchi, as if I’ve learnt one thing about the entertainment industry in Japan, one sure way to get ahead is to be a one-trick pony, then milk it for all you’re worth!
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Having just got my gold status with Flying Blue and enough points banked for business class to Europe and back – that’s a really poor introduction and sounds just like the boasting that it is! Anyway, today’s survey is from MyVoice, looking at usage of airline mileage services.

Demographics

Over the first five days of October 2008 14,650 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teens, 14% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 18% aged fifty or older.

I think KLM are a very good airline, but their Flying Blue partner Air France were a bit iffy the one time I flew cattle class with them, but the main drawback with them is that their trans-Pacific partner is NorthWest. They charge $5 for a drink in economy, yet when I got to my destination in Boston last month I could get a pint of fresh draft at a rather posh hotel for just $4.50. They did upgrade me to business class on the way back, however, which was nice.

I’ve twice used saved ANA points; the first was on magnet pillows – the wife bought them! Next was on a pair of his and her watches that have performed rather well, considering.
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This rather a bit too short to be really useful report published on japan.internet.com regarding goo Research’s fourth regular electronic money survey revealed that the Osaifu Keitai feature in most phones go unused.

Demographics

Between the 20th and 23rd of October 2008 1,093 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed an internet-based questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample were male, 16.5% were in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, and 27.7% aged fifty or older.

Note that in Q2 Osaifu Keitai (literally Mobile Wallet) is a trademarked service of docomo, the main promoter of electronic cash, but now most phones from the three big operators come with the FeliCa chip inside, ready to work with most electronic cash providers.
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Today, 3rd November, is Culture Day in Japan, so I present some modern otaku culture for your enjoyment. This is a survey from iShare on the awareness of Hatsune Miku. If you are not aware who she is, keep reading, or search for her on the internet, or just visit this fan site.

Demographics

Over the 6th and 7th of October 2008 540 members of the free email forwarding service CLUB BBQ completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.2% of the sample were male, and 19.8% in their twenties, and 80.2% in their thirties. Why there was such a narrow age band, I don’t know.

Hatsune Miku picture grabbed from Mika-tan’s blog via Danny Choo.
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When I wrote my iPhone R.I.P. article last month a lot of people told me I was completely wrong for making such a big deal out of emoji as the key feature missing on Apple’s iPhone in Japan.

However, at a recent press conference, Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank, the Japanese carrier for the iPhone, said the following about the planned update of the iPhone software and the addition of emoji:

“Email without emoticons can’t be email in Japan. We persuaded Apple Computer (to localize iPhones for the Japanese market).”

Since I’m tooting my own blog’s horn here, I’d also like to point out that Apple still need to add a retro CHTML (iMode-like) browser and a strap hook.