世論 What Japan Thinks

Perhaps it’s just the types of web sites I frequent (Slashdot and digg, for instance), or perhaps it’s just that people are reluctant to admit to filesharing even semi-anonymously, but this recent survey conducted by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into movie watching showed P2P the second least-popular way for obtaining movies.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 16th of May 2008 1,087 members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.4% of the sample was male, 12.1% were in their teens, 22.1% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 28.0% aged fifty or older.

“Better than free” is the basic strategy pursued by many paid services that compete with pirated content. Apple’s iTunes, in particular, mostly achieves this goal, but other systems I have used, especially from large Japanese corporates, are nowhere near realising this. I’ve not personally used any of these mail-order DVD rental systems, as most of my film needs are met by either the cinema or stuff recorded off cable.

I’m not sure why video tape-only people were eliminated from Q2, and finding out the patterns of usage of tape and DVD (and hard disk, for that matter) would have been interesting. Perhaps if one pays to obtain the full results one can learn these details. I’m also a little surprised that Video On Demand and acTVila were not distinct answers for Q2.
Read the rest of this entry »

A bit like when we looked at RSS readers two weeks ago, today we see in this survey from Marsh and reported on by japan.internet.com that podcasting also seems to be falling by the wayside.

Demographics

Over the 14th and 15th of May 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and by age 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 14.7% in their fifties, and 5.3% aged sixty or older.

Q1 gives a jaw-droppingly high score for iPod ownership!

I’ve always wanted to do a podcast, but I don’t really like listening to recordings of my voice.
Read the rest of this entry »

This Sunday’s sillyness is in two parts, both about food. Second, goo Ranking asked its panel to pick the food they’d like to thank the first human who ate it. I don’t know if that makes sense at first glance, but basically which food that appears disgusting to look at but is actually rather nice once you acquire the taste. Be sure to read the first part on strange but scary foods one might risk eating.

Demographics

Over the 21st and 22nd of March 2008 1,036 people from the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.7% were male, 7.0% in their teens, 14.7% in their twenties, 30.1% in their thirties, 27.0% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 10.2% aged sixty or over. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

Ginkgo nuts are wonderful, but I don’t know why they rate here! Coffee seems a bit tame, but civet coffee is another matter!
Read the rest of this entry »

This Sunday’s sillyness is in two parts, both about food. First off we have a survey based on a blog, The Hall of Strange Foods, where the writer goes around the country finding weird and wonderful foods to try. So, based on that blog, goo Ranking asked its panel to pick the strange but scary Japanese foods they’d like to try. Be sure to read the second part on thanking the first human to eat a foodstuff.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 24th of April 2008 1,048 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.7% of the sample was female, 7.1% in their teens, 14.7% in their twenties, 29.0% in their thirties, 27.4% in their forties, 11.6% in their fifties, and 10.2% 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.

Someone once brought the Ghengis Khan caramels back to the office, and the general reaction was absolute disgust! From the list sweet green tea and adzuki spaghetti is about the only one I’d risk!

Click through the food names for plenty of pictures of the foods in question!
Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s an interesting topic for tonight’s survey, a look by JR Tokai Express Research Inc, reported on by japan.internet.com, into the matter of IT in medical establishments.

Demographics

On the 13th of May 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group who were employed in a medical-related field completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 67.3% of the sample were male, 7.9% were in their twenties, 32.7% in their thirties, 44.2% in their forties, 13.6% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties.

Many small clinics these days seem to be running online booking services, so you can make your appointment at the start of the day, and keep a watch on the length of the queue and head for the surgery at a suitable time to minimise your wait.

On the other hand, at big hospitals there is almost always one counter to hand over your consultation form to, which then disappears into a back office for an indeterminate amount of time, then you get called to pay at a different desk. Even big, heavily-computerised hospitals don’t seem to have a fully electronic payment system, and it would seem that there is no practical reason why they couldn’t make the whole system electronic so I could have my bill ready and waiting for payment as soon as I leave the doctor’s office.
Read the rest of this entry »

One of the nice things about having a big archive of surveys is that when a survey like this one from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into the matter of mobile phone batteries comes along, I can point you at the results of a similar survey from last year and the year before.

Demographics

Between the 20th and 23th of May 2008 325 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.2% of the sample were female, 20.6% were in their twenties, 38.5% in their thirties, 26.8% in their forties, 9.2% in their fifties, and 4.9% in their sixties.

I usually recharge at work these days, with a USB adaptor thingie I got free at a conference once. It’s a wonderfully handy device, and it’s easier to remember to do it at work rather than at home. What I should also buy sometime is a clockwork recharger, or perhaps even this interesting one from Strapya, the solar-powered recharger. It looks really cool, and a snip at 1,995 yen! I don’t know how well it would work with overseas phones though.
Read the rest of this entry »

With one of the favourite ways to pass the time in trains being fiddling with one’s mobile phone, this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into mobile phone email lets us look at what people are doing with them on the train.

Demographics

On the 10th of May 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group employed in the private sector completed a closed online questionnaire. 75.5% of the sample was male, 11.5% in their twenties, 35.2% in their thirties, 38.8% in their forties, 11.5% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties. Note that as JR Tokai Express draws some of its monitor base from promotion through JR Tokai Express trains, there may very well be a bias towards people who frequently use the bullet train, where it is acceptable to talk on one’s mobile in between the carriages.

As noted above, as there are probably a lot of business travelers, the 11% who talk on trains might include a certain percentage who only do it on the shinkansen or other long-distance trains where such behaviour is acceptable.

Also in Q2, One Seg television at 12% just beats music playing, but many more people use iPods instead for their in-train audio entertainment.

The extra information from Q2 saying that three in four were checking route information strengthens my assumption that there were a lot of business travelers in the survey.
Read the rest of this entry »

This is a survey from the start of March that I only got round to translating now, but the information is hopefully worth the wait! The survey was conducted by Yahoo! Japan Value Insight in Japan, Embrain.co.ltd in South Korea, and INFO BRIDGE CHINA Co., Ltd in Japan, South Korea, and China awareness.

Demographics

Between the 29th of February and 4th of March 2008 500 Japanese, 547 South Koreans, and 524 Chinese took part in a closed internet-based questionnaire. All respondents were aged between 20 and 59, but a detailed breakdown was not provided. The Chinese respondents were from all over China, but given availability of internet access, there was perhaps a significant bias towards middle-class city dwellers in their sample.

Note that from now on I will use just Korea, but I always mean South Korea.

Q2A is interesting, in that there is a very noticable lack of pride in their own products amongst young Japanese. The reason for this disaffection would be well worth investigating – I cannot think of any particular issue that would make youths and youths only react in this way. Indeed, given the number of scandals last year involving Japanese products, foodstuffs in particular, I am very surprised that there is no real lack of pride amongst older people, although perhaps given the context of the survey, people were thinking internationally, so stale biscuits don’t really affect Japan as a global brand.
Read the rest of this entry »

I noticed during the last month or so that a few times Debito’s blog went a bit funny, spewing out random characters instead of the usual blog, behaviour that some might argue was an improvement, I suspect.

However, today (21st May) I got a hit from someone searching for “Debito”, so I did the same search to see what was going on and:

Eh, no debito.org! The site is still running, but even trying the site-specific site:debito.org turns up not a sausage.

I also noticed that Occidentalism.org dropped off Google recently, but I susupect the reason for that was due to a lot of keyword stuffing in hidden text, something that doesn’t seem to be happening at Debito’s site.

This short but rather sweet survey from blogch and iShare into ranking of what is considered personal information made me think, and I hope it does the same for you.

Demographics

Between the 12th and 14th of May 2008 636 members of blogch completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.9% of the sample was male, 14.5% in their twenties, 46.7% in their thirties, 27.4% in their forties, and 11.5% in their teens or over fifty.

I don’t know why home email address was not included in the survey, nor why people help their age more private than their date of birth!

For me, there is no way I would part with my cell phone number and email address, and for passport number, I’d query the need for people to ask for it rather than be concerned about the privacy issue.

All junk mail, as well as all other envelopes with addresses on them, go through the shredder before disposal, although I always suspect that the reason is more to stop the rubbish police tracking us down for chucking stuff out on the wrong day!

Read the rest of this entry »