世論 What Japan Thinks

Regular readers will know that the most popular search engine in Japan is Yahoo!, with Google just a few percentage points behind, but what do people do at these sites? This recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com looking at web search tried to answer these questions.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 12th of September 2008 1,060 members of the goo Research monitor panel (the report actually says goo users, but I don’t know how accurate that is) completed an online survey. 51.9% of the sample were male, 11.6% in their teens, 22.2% in their twenties, 22.0% in their thirties, 19.0% in their forties, and 25.3% aged fifty or older.

Ego-searching is looking for your own name in the search engines. Not suprisingly, lots of relevant information turns up about me since I’ve got a unique double-barrel that I use online a bit. However, my full birth name turns up absolutely zero, which is not surprising as I don’t often use my middle name.
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One of the eternal questions is “Coke or Pepsi?”, which is also one question from this survey from iShare on cola. I was going to joke that tomorrow I will be doing “Boxers or briefs?”, but then I remembered that I’d already done that one!

Demographics

Between the 29th of August and the 1st of September 2008 464 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private online survey. 54.7% of the sample were male, 14.2% in their twenties, 47.4% in their thirties, 28.2% in their forties, and 10.1% in their teens or aged fifty or older.

I’m a Diet Coke person myself, which in Japan actually contains a little bit of sugar. I can cope with Diet Pepsi, but the full sugar efforts are disgusting. The Diet Coke with added vitamins is pretty awful too. How about you?

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Ahh, I could write pages and pages on this topic, but as I like getting paid every month I’d better keep quiet and just stick to the facts in this survey from Marsh Inc that was reported on by japan.internet.com on the subject of corporate information leaks. For reference, just last week I looked at leaks from the home environment.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 8th of September 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group who used PCs completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and 20:20:20:20:20 between those in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and sixty or older.

We have some new rules in our office that have been introduced over the last couple of weeks, which I do recognise will increase data security and reduce the risk of accidental leaks, but… I can’t really qualify that “but” without risking falling foul of said data security rules! Ah well, I’ll have a fun team meeting tomorrow where I plan to point out an issue or two and generally play at awkward buggers.

In Q2, I suspect one can read “can’t answer” as “yes”! Indeed, the sample size for Q2SQ indicates that the “can’t answer” people did regardless.
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Following up, in a way, on Saturday’s look at the taspo card, let’s look at smoking in Japan, according to a survey conducted by Central Research Services, Inc.

Demographics

2,000 people aged twenty or over were randomly selected to take part in this survey. 1,328 people of those selected took part in face-to-face interviews between the 6th and 9th of June 2008. Further demographic information was not provided. This was the 22nd time the survey has been conducted; the previous ones were in 1978, 1983, and every year since 1987.

Notice in Q1 there has been a slight rise in smoking rates. Unfortunately no historical information is provided for the demographic breakdown, so it’s difficult to see where the rise is coming from – is it more new smokers, or less people quitting? Is the problem under-age smokers getting addicted, or adults choosing to start?

Q4, giving the numbers bothered by smoking, is a bit difficult to interpret, as both smokers and non-smokers answered.
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Here’s a quick ranking survery from goo Ranking to squeeze in as my entry to the September 2008 Japan Blog Matsuri on poorly-understood job titles in Japan. As the theme of this month’s Matsuri is language, I’ll list the original Japanese too. I’ll bet many of my readers will be stumped by some of the translations too!

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.
It’s interesting that most of the confusing job titles are English ones. Number 7, Vice-President, refers not to people like Dick Cheney, but to something I notice in start-ups, where everyone in at the founding and/or with substantial shareholdings gets an honorary vice-presidentship for their troubles. I’m not sure what number 14 is doing on the list – an orchestra conductor is a 指揮者, shikisha – do they mean bus conductor?

I used to have an unofficial job title of Transcontinental Code Monkey (I might even still have the T-shirt somewhere), but that’s another story.

Oh, and for the Blog Matsuri I though this or this would have been much more appropriate, but the translation defeated me!
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With the nationwide introduction of taspo, Tobacco pASsPOrt – a proof of age certificate (well, proof that someone over twenty applied for the card) – now complete, DIMSDRIVE Research took their second look at taspo. The first look at taspo by DIMSDRIVE was back in May.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 14th of August 2008 7,381 members of the DIMSDRIVE Research monitor group completed a members-only internet-based questionnaire. 52.3% of the sample were female, 1.1% in their teens, 13.5% in their twenties, 33.5% in their thirties, 30.6% in their forties, 14.6% in their fifties, and 6.7% aged sixty or older.

One obvious effect of taspo is that half as many smokers are now using cigarette vending machines, which must be a serious financial blow to people who have them outside their shops.

At a slight tangent, but my office sells ciggies by the case, and last week they started a promotion with a free gift per pack of 200, with the clip art reading “Thank you father”. Monday the 15th of September is Respect for the Aged Day, so I suspect they are promoting killing your parents with cancer kindness.
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Although the main holiday season is over, this survey by DIMSDRIVE Research into booking lodgings for domestic travel was actually conducted in May, although DIMSDRIVE only got round to publishing it this month.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 22nd of August 2008 9,862 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.7% of the sample were female, 1.0% in their teens, 14.3% in their twenties, 34.5% in their thirties, 30.2% in their forties, 13.9% in their fifties, and 6.1% aged sixty or older.

The only domestic travel I’ve taken this year was a three-day business trip to Tokyo, but this survey is concerned with leisure travel However, wifey booked a night at Kansai Airport before our flight overseas via the internet – if you do stay at the Nikko hotel there it’s well worth joining their members’ club as you get a free room upgrade ticket for your troubles.
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Last time I looked at the iPhone I got a comment on me being a bit negative in my outlook, so this time in a survey by BlogCh looking at smartphones I promise to be more positive!

Demographics

Between the 27th and 29th of August 2008 801 members of the free email service CLUB BBQ who also had a mobile phone for private use completed an online survey. 54.2% of the sample were male, 17.5% in their twenties, 48.3% in their thirties, 29.0% in their forties, and 5.2% in their teens or aged fifty or older. Note that the CLUB BBQ demographics is more technologically aware than the average internet user.

I thought my next mobile phone might be just another bog-standard one, but I just recently read a bit about the HTC Touch (or the HT1100 as DoCoMo label it) and it gets a lot of good reviews and comes in at the same price as… but it doesn’t do emoji. Curses! However, the Willcom 03, one of the subjects of this review, can at least display them.

Indeed, looking at the Willcom 03 feature set it looks like it is what the iPhone should have been for the Japan market. Oops, I’m being negative again, but for the sake of research I stopped at a mobile phone shop and picked up the Willcom 03 leaflet. It’s very feminine, telling the story of a week in the life of a young businesswoman in suitable pastel colours, and for just 6,700 yen all-in for unlimited data and zero money down (I think), it’s a winner.

Incidentally, I’ve not seen an iPhone in the wild yet, and I’ve seen just one or two iPod touches
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Perhaps I over-estimate the average Japanese consumer’s desire for value before reputation, but I found the results of this survey conducted by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into computers at home quite surprising.

Demographics

Between the 3rd and 8th of September 2008 1,001 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 3.0% of the sample were male, 12.7% in their teens, 22.1% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 27.7% aged fifty or older.

NEC, Fujitsu, Toshiba and Sony have TV tuners in most of their line-up, as well as integrated features for recording television shows to disk, so their desktops, usually equipped with wide-screens, can easily double as televisions in cramped Japanese homes.

In the notebook field, Panasonic come a very poor 10th with not even 3% of the home market, despite an earlier survey showing them to be the most popular business notebook. The price of them at retail is frightening, quite frankly, and they come with very few of the bells and whistles that are loaded (overloaded?) onto the other brands. Wondering out loud with absolutely no information to back this up, but given that they have recently released Viera-branded (their TV technology) mobile phones, I wonder if they’ll build a Viera notebook (or even desktop) to try to capture more of the home market?

Finally, despite the sub-notebook market being big in the West at least, and despite many shops selling an Asus Eee PC for just 100 yen if you take out a two-year subscription to the 3G mobile internet service from E-Mobile, Asus and Acer with their Aspire One barely register in sales or purchase intentions.
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You may have read the news about Bletchley Park being in financial difficulties, with the risk of losing the home of the very first digital computer and the centre for wartime code-breaking.

My father worked there, and now I’m working with people from an organisation spawned from there of cryptography for peaceful purposes. They are looking for donations, so please join me in sending a few pounds there:

Donate more than £50 and they’ll send you a T-shirt. Thanks!