世論 What Japan Thinks

With the Winny file sharing program being the main vector for data loss (that we hear of, anyway) in Japan, what about another way, through careless use of removable media at work? This was the topic of a recent survey by Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 19th of September 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group employed in either the public or private sector completed an internet-based private questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, and 20:20:20:20:20 by age split between those in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and aged sixty or older.

Company confidentiality prevents me talking about any data loss issues that may or may not have happened, but we have recently introduced draconian policies for handling writable media that has resulted in us throwing out almost everything from floppy disks to memory sticks as part of a media traceability scheme. The biggest bummer personally is that I am no longer allowed to take my mobile phone into my office (I work in a high-security level area) so I do get a bit lonely during the day.
Read the rest of this entry »

You might have seen that to celebrate their 10th anniversary, Google has put their index from 2001 online. Let’s try a few searches and see how Japan looked then:

• Ken Y-N was Welsh
• What Japan Thinks thought about privatisation
• Japan Probe was favourable to Microsoft
• Japundit did not exist
• Danny Choo was Choo Choo Records
• Japan Soc was a newsgroup
• Tokyo Times was on Interesting People
• Trans-Pacific Radio was nuclear fallout
• Debito was still Debito
• an englishman in osaka was an englishman in new york
• The Long Countdown was 335 days, 2 hours and 4 minutes away from Christmas
• Nihon Hacks was a translation hack
• SUICA was someone in Guatamala
• taspo was the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra
• mixi was a Finnish kennel and cattery
• 3Yen was the non-consolidated interim financial results
• Japan Blog Matsuri was some eyecandy to start your day right
• TV In Japan provided top quality information via the borderless digital media
• Watashi to Tokyo had a pet name problem
• And finally, Gaijin Tonic was Gaijin A-GOGO

If you’ve lived in Japan for any amount of time you might suspect that just about the only times that get resold are books, music and software, at places like the entertainingly-named Book Off, but to find out what other transactions take place, MyVoice looked at the buying and selling of used goods.

Demographics

Over the first five days of September 2008 15,250 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online 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.

I did once buy a Gameboy Advance new then some second-hand software, but I left the device on a flight to Amsterdam! I’ve bought and sold through Book Off, although it’s a bit scary to visit their shop and see mile upon mile of books to browse through! I also once sold a digital camera back to a shop, but that was a highly unsatisfactory experience. I have my old dead computer to dispose of, but I don’t think I could get any money for that, so I’ll drop it off with a recycler somewhere.
Read the rest of this entry »

Another mobile phone technology nearing the 50% barrier is GPS, Global Positioning System, according to this survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com looking into GPS. Two days ago we saw that contactless IC chip-based electronic money had passed the 50% mark, and another article I read today about One Seg digital terrestrial television for mobile devices had also passed this milestone. (The original Japanese source is here)

Demographics

Between the 16th to 23rd of September 2008 1,056 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 60.8% of the sample were male (7 or so points higher than usual, but no explanation is given why), 12.9% were in their teens, 20.7% in their twenties, 20.2% in their thirties, 22.1% in their forties, and 24.2% aged fifty or older.

I’ve never used a GPS in a portable device, but I couldn’t drive without my car navi system. I rented a Prius last month but whatever default settings they had were a bit wonky, wanting me to detour just a little too far just so I could stick to motorways. I did manage to confuse it for a bit by missing a motorway entrance and instead cruised along underneath where I should have been, but it did recover effortlessly, and I made all my destinations with the minimum of drama.

The latest revision of the Prius navigation and entertainment centre also automatically rips CDs to hard disk and labels them using the Gracenote database, but that’s another story entirely!
Read the rest of this entry »

MyVoice recently published their second survey into pet life, a rather too direct translation of the Japanese title of the survey. I also translated the results of their first look at pet life almost three years ago, for reference.

Demographics

Over the first five days of September 2008 15,293 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online survey. 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.

When I wrote about cat pee and poo recently one question that came up there too was about shedding hair. One of my readers, sasutan, was kind enough to highlight the FURminator as an effective means of reducing shedding. However, some investigation on the internet priced it at around 10,000 yen (US$100), but further investigation showed that an alternative, the ShedBuster is widely available in Japan at under a third of the price, and apparently even uses the identical metal brush head supplier as the FURminator. One especially nice bonus of these undercoat brushes is that unlike ordinary brushes they don’t cause huge clouds of hair, but instead almost all the hair clumps in the tines, so there’s fewer problems for those with cat allergies, and of course less dead hair also means less dandruff, the cause of most cat allegies, so it’s a win-win device.
Read the rest of this entry »

According to this survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com a very significant threshold has been crossed, with the majority of Japanese now carrying an electronic cash-capable device, be it either in a credit card form factor or in a mobile phone, according to the third regular electronic cash survey.

Demographics

Between the 12th and 17th of September 2008 1,072 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed an online private questionnaire. 53.6% of the sample were male, 15.7% in their teens, 18.4% in their twenties, 21.9% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, and 27.9% aged fifty or older.

I have for one out of the three legs of my journey to work a ICOCA card, JR West’s version of the Suica railway pass. However, mine is used exclusively as a season ticket only; I haven’t used it as cash for at least two years. Work also allows us to use our RFID-enabled company ID to pay for lunch and at the shop, but that’s not really electronic cash, just a quick credit card payment function.

My wife uses her mobile phone a lot, however, at shops in and around the stations, but that’s technically not electronic cash as she has it linked to her credit card. I don’t know how much this blurring of roles affected the answers to the survey, however, but Q1SQ1 suggests that most people are charging their cards with cash, not having a direct link to a credit card or bank account.
Read the rest of this entry »

Just a quick note to any of my readers who might be docomo users but have missed the news. From the day after tomorrow (1st of October 2008) docomo introduce their “pake-hodai double” flat-rate packet charge. Their English site is rather out of date, but the Japanese page has the details. Basically rather than the mess of plans they had before there is now a simple sliding scale of charges just like the other providers have. For 1,029 yen you get 12,250 packets (about 1.5 megabytes), then each additional 128 byte packet costs 0.084 yen until you get to 52,500 packets (6.7 megs), where it tops off at 4,410 yen. The one point of note is that if you use a full browser (Mobile Explorer, Opera, etc) it doesn’t top off until 5,985 yen, but don’t ask me what happens if you mix both types of packet! So, the end-points are the same if you are a heavy data user, but this is the best plan for light, but not too light, users.

You can apply through your mobile phone, via the My docomo site, or in person at any docomo shop.

However, using your phone as a modem for your computer is still out of scope of the new plan, so get an e-mobile data card instead!

Next in an occasional series of goo Ranking-supplied silliness on views of home life is what people can’t help checking out when visiting a friend’s room, for both checking women and checking 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.

Coincidentally, recently I got an email from a reader asking for links to other surveys on this sort of topic, so here goes: scary home life of friends of the opposite sex and why your room turns women or men off.
Read the rest of this entry »

In Japan adulthood is 20 years old, but there is a bit of a debate going on at the moment regarding changing this. A recent survey conducted by the Cabinet Office Japan into the age of majority looked at some of the issues surrounding this topic.

Demographics

Between the 10th and 27th of July 2008 5,000 randomly selected members of the public over the aged of 18 were interviewed face-to-face. 3,060 people were successfully interviewed; 53.2% of the sample were female, 1.4% were aged 18 or 19, 8.8% were in their twenties, 14.9% in their thirties, 17.8% in their forties, 20.9% in their fifties, 20.8% in their sixties, and 15.4% aged seventy or older. 75.0% were married, 9.5% divorced or widowed, and 15.5% not married. 10.4% had pre-school children, 15.4% elementary or middle-school children, 6.9% high school, 7.0% university or college, etc, 0.5% post graduate, and 50.2% had children finished with education and now employed or otherwise. Finally, 24.2% did not have any children.

This is a very interesting survey that perhaps reinforces prejudices or stereotypes that we hold of the Japanese. The most surprising figure for me was the 10% or more who thought the law is the law, so as an individual citizen one cannot think of changing it. However, if you asked similar questions in other countries, what sort of figure would you get there?
Read the rest of this entry »

I left the UK just as alcopops, fizzy drink-like youth-targeted cheap and relatively high in alcohol drinks started to become a serious problem due to their appeal to under-age drinkers. In Japan there is chuhai, and this is what MyVoice looked at in their sixth canned chuhai survey.

Demographics

Over the first five days in September 2008 15,054 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 15% in their twetnies, 36% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 20% in their fifties.

According to the dictionary, chuhai is an abbreviation of shochu highball, Japanese spirits with tonic water, although the canned form often bears little resemblence to its humble origin. Alcohol content varies from 4% to 7%, and due to low tax rates one can of supermarket own-brand costs 88 yen (84 US cents or 45 UK pennies) for 330 millitres, close to half the price of branded beer, or about a third less than happoshu, and even cheaper when you consider the price per unit of alcohol.

By the way, yes, Suntory Calorie. actually does have a full stop after Calorie, it’s not a misprint!
Read the rest of this entry »