世論 What Japan Thinks

A recent survey conducted by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com looked at how Japanese keep track of all five (or six, depending on what you count) of the four seasons via the weather forecast.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 3rd of October 2008 1,059 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.0% of the sample were male, 16.8% in their teens, 17.8% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 15.7% in their forties, 16.0% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

Just a couple of days ago I leafed through a bilingual book on questions on everyday things in Japan, with one of the questions being how the percentage of rain falling is calculated. Bascially, for the time period given it is the chance of more than 1 millimetre of rain falling within a single one hour period. There is no implication of how heavy the rain will be barring the 1 millimetre, however.
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This Sunday I have a pair of loosely-connected surveys, the first on what would you forgive you partner for doing, for both men forgiving women and women forgiving men. Next up is perhaps why one would forgive one’s other half, namely what aspects of him or her do they like, again both what men like about their women and what women like about their men.

Demographics

Between the 25th and 28th of July 2008 1,072 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.3% of the sample were male, 5.7% in their teens, 14.4% in their twenties, 31,0% in their thirties, 28.1% in their forties, 10.5% in their fifties, and 10.4% 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 find it interesting that for people’s other half qualities like “considerate”, “courteous” or “well-mannered” do not appear on the list.
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This survey from MyVoice is their third home use air conditioner survey. I thought I had translated their second air conditioner survey last year, but it turns out it was from DIMSDRIVE Research instead. And it was more interesting…

Demographics

Over the first five days of September 2008 15,465 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online survey. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teeens, 15% in their twenties, 36% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% in their fifties.

I looked at the previous survey and I discovered I said just about everything I know about Japanese air conditioners! I do get people searching occasionally for Japanese air conditioner manuals – the functionality is often rather complex and if you can’t read Japanese it’s difficult to know what to do. Now, there’s an idea for a Web 2.0 site – www.rimoconmaster.com (rimocon being the Japanese abbreviation for REMOte CONtroller), upload a photo of your remote (and rice cooker, microwave, etc) with the buttons labeled, or without them labeled and get other users to fill in the functions.
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With One Seg terrestrial digital television now having crossed the 50% threshold in mobile phones (according to another survey; this one just doesn’t quite make it), with most One Seg mobile having recording facilities, and with many of the new hard disk video recorders having options to save contents to memory cards for replay on mobile phones, this recent survey from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into video on mobile phones looked at how these features are being used.

Demographics

Over the 2nd and 3rd of October 2008 300 mobile phone-owning members of the Marsh monitor group answered a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was evenly split 50:50 male and female, and 20:20:20:20:20 between those in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and sixty or over.

Yesterday evening I) watched One Seg for the first time, but even on a slow local train, my wife’s external aerial-free phone kept breaking up so the best we could manage was the subtitles! That probably goes some way to explaining why the numbers watching on the move are relatively low.
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Perhaps it’s partially because the rules on advertising beer in the UK and the US, etc are very strict about not promoting enjoying beer, but humour is often key theme in their advertisements. Without such shackles in Japan, television spots for beer focus on noisy gulping down of said alcoholic beverages. This subject, beer and advertisements, was the topic for a recent survey from MyVoice.

Demographics

Over the first five days of September 2008 15,367 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 15% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% in their fifties.

Just to give you an idea on how these beers get advertised, in Q2 I’ve embedded YouTube videos for each of the brands. Yes, that’s a very young Helena Bonham-Carter selling Suntory Malts! As a bonus, here’s an extra advert that I can’t embed…
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In Japanese, an SLR is 一眼レフ, ichigan refu, very much a direct translation of Single-Lens Reflex camera. However, it can be a bit of a mouthful and the Japanese do like abbreviating things, and along with compact digital camera (which is a direct loan word from English), there are many abbreviations that people have adopted. To find out what they are, goo Research conducted a survey reported on by japan.internet.com into digital cameras.

Demographics

Between the 25th and 29th of September 2008 1,084 members of the goo Research online monitor panel successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 53.2% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 12.4% aged sixty or older.

I usually call my point and click (a pink Lumix) a digi-camé in both Japanese and English. I’ve never really had the reason to call a digital SLR anything in Japanese, however.
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A recent survey reported on by ITmedia and conducted by ASCII Media Works looked at Mac users, in particular contrasting them with Windows users.

Demographics

In mid-September 2008 278 Mac users and 494 Windows PC users who were memebers of the ASCII General Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The age and sex profiles were not noted, although given the small amount of housewives and given that ASCII is a computer magazine, the respondent pool appears to be mostly male.

There’s so many great figures in this survey – Mac users earn more, are more creative and are more interested in foreign goods, whereas Windows users are more conservative and like the same old same. The most stunning figure, however, was for liked mobile phone manufacturers in Q7; not surprisingly over two in five Mac users were iPhone fans, but a surprisingly-low 5% of Windows users expressed an interest. Following up, Q8 showed that over half as many again Mac users were with SoftBank; remember, SoftBank carry the iPhone, and with similar percentages for other carriers, one must conclude that around one in ten Mac owners have bought iPhones to accompany their phones from other carriers.
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A few months ago there was a couple of articles in the US press with suspect (or just poorly-reported) statistics on cellphone literature in Japan, but at the time I didn’t have any good data to refute the stories with. However, this weekend not one, but two surveys come along, one from goo Research and one from Marsh, both reported on by japan.internet.com, on this very topic of cellphone novels.

Demographics

For the goo Research sample, between the 22nd and 25th of September 2008 1,074 people from their online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 21.9% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 16.2% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

For the Marsh sample, on the 26th of September 2008 they interviewed 300 females from their monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 21.7% were in their twenties, 51.3% in their thirties, and 27.0% in their forties.

Very surprising for me is that goo Research’s mixed sample showed a higher percentage of readership than Marsh’s young female group, although the level of enjoyment was relatively similar for both groups. The reasons for this would be interesting to investigate.
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The ways of the opposite sex are baffling to many of us, so this little bit of frivolity from goo Ranking looked at what people can’t figure out about the opposite sex, for both men being baffled by women and women being baffled by men

Demographics

Between the 19th and 21st of August 2008 1,028 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.0% of the sample were female, 5.7% in their teens, 11.2% in their twenties, 30.4% in their thirties, 30.6% in their forties, 14.7% in their fifties, and 7.3% 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’ll have to nod in agreement with just about all the women’s behaviours! Number 4 is most irritating for me, and number 6 is just inexplicable!

For the men’s number one, women obviously don’t know that about half the men in my office gob into the urinal. I have no clue why either. Talking of men liking Gundam, Japan Today had a strange quote from a comedian regarding Gundam and pr0n!
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Another recent survey from MyVoice looked this time at the sense of taste.

Demographics

Over the first five days of September 2008 15,245 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 36% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% in their fifties.

Many Japanese seem to make a fuss over the inability of foreigners to eat anko, a sweet bean paste usually made from adzuki beans, which I have never had a problem with. Certain kinds of seaweed have never been a problem, but natto defeats me every time. I used to hate Brie and other soft French cheeses until I went to Normandie and had it fresh there, so perhaps I need to find a similarly-fresh kind of natto, not the cheap supermarket plastic packs.

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