From kimono to keitai; research Japanese facts and figures through translated opinion polls and surveys.
In order to try to comply with Google’s guidelines for publishers, and to try to look a bit more professional, I’ve added a Privacy Policy to the site.
It basically says I will not give away or sell anyone’s email address or other personal data, but I keep logs of visitors (as do just about all web sites) for analysis and improving the site.
If you want to create your own, I used this one from Direct Marketing Association this one from Synclastic.
One of the big new things for television in Japan these days is AcTVila, basically a portal site for internet-connected televisions. A recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by March Inc into usage of AcTVila investigated awareness of the technology.
Between the 6th and 10th of March 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 13.3% in their fifties, and 6.7% aged sixty or older.
I’ve not played with the service myself, and I’m still on an analogue television, so I’m a bit in the dark about the whole affair! I’ve not even seen advertisements for the service, or television manufacturers promoting support for it in their advertising, so I’m not sure where the awareness is coming from.
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As this is an area in which I have more than just a passing interest, I found this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research into the matter of mobile phone software upgrades most interesting.
Between the 21st and 24th of March 2008 1,090 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.8% of the sample was male, 17.2% in their teens, 19.4% in their twenties, 15.6% in their thirties, 17.3% in their forties, 18.4% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.
I suspect my phone is set to manual mode for update notification; my wife, however, had random power-offs when writing mail that I thought may be due to a wonky keyboard, but there had been a software update for the phone, so she downloaded that update and the problem went away.
The low percentage of those with software bugs is due to Japanese quality, where quality is defined as performance to specification. Some specifications are terrible, and the implementation is similarly sometimes suspect, but everything usually works as defined.
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Healthy beer is a phrase one doesn’t hear too often, but that’s basically the title of a recent survey conducted by MyVoice into health-related beer-like drinks.
Over the first five days of March 2008 14,373 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 15% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, and 16% in their fifties. Note that since the legal drinking age is twenty, teenagers were excluded from this survey.
I got a free can of Kirin ZERO for going to see a cross-dressing dancing General Douglas MacArthur (don’t ask!) but my wife gave it away to the father-in-law before I got a chance to sample it. I tried Tanrei Green Label and it was just as much swill as the full-sugar Tanrei!
In Q7, being good for health is an interesting answer. I suspect it is not just a poor wording (“can control calorie intake” might have been better), but I’ve seen people on television interpret “not so bad for you” as “can consume as much as I like.” One strong memory is of an actor knocking back two or more bottles of red wine a night and being shocked when the doctor told him that that was a bad thing.
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This headline will no doubt have most of my readers groaning, but more of that a couple of paragraphs further down. This was one of the curious results from a recent survey conducted by Japan Research Council into concerns about environmental problems.
Between the 7th and 19th of November 2007 (before the aforementioned Japan Tobacco had a number of their China-made frozen gyoza laced with poison, a case that is still unresolved) 1,200 people were randomly selected from resident databases in 200 representative areas. From each of the locations 6 willing survey respondents were chosen for face-to-face interviews. 50.4% of the sample were female, 6.2% were in their teens, 15.2% in their twenties, 17.9% in their thirties, 15.2% in their forties, 18.5% in their fifties, 15.9% in their sixties, and 11.1% in their seventies.
Although Toyota do produce a lot of fuel-efficient cars, with the Prius the star amongst them, and are not slow to blow their own trumpet on the topic, other cars in their range are not so great fuel-wise, and indeed as I mentioned before, their new Noah and Voxy have 10% worse fuel consumption than the old models! As for Japan Tobacco, this survey highlights how clever, evily clever, their advertising team are. Smoking outside has been changed from a health issue to litter and safety issues, with the dangers being poking children in the eyes with lighted ciggies or dropping butt ends rather than dying horribly from cancer or living out your twilight years dragging an oxygen bottle behind you. Also note that Japan Tobacco outranks Sharp, the world’s largest producer of solar panels.
This survey can be cross-referenced with another recent one on Warm Biz from the same company.
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Continuing the running a mile series, this fun survey from goo Ranking looks at what stuff in a friend of the opposite sex who lives alone’s room makes you want to run a mile, for both men looking at women’s rooms and women looking at men’s rooms.
Bewteen the 22nd and 25th of January 2008 1,126 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.4% of the sample was female, 3.6% in their teens, 15.8% in their twenties, 35.1% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 11.0% 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.
This survey is looking at friends who invite you round to their home for just an innocent visit, but they are also the sort of friend you might consider going out with. I haven’t a clue what sort of woman might have cigars lying around the house, though, but I don’t think I’d hang around to find out… Similarly I don’t know what women were thinking when they rated men with bunny ears so highly; are there really than many guys with them?
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I’m sure many other people like to grab a bit of chocolate as comfort food to cope with the stresses of daily life, and this survey from MyVoice into mood-changing and sweets showed that the Japanese are no different!
Over the first five days of March 14,773 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% were female, 1% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 17% in their fifties.
I rate pretty highly on the stress scale, and I do eat perhaps too much chocolate, especially at work to get me through the afternoon I snack on Petit Bit chocolate, with kinako (soya bean flour) flavour being my favourite at the moment.
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As I just had one of them today, I thought I’d publish this silly goo Ranking two days early; the survey looks at the moment when you realise you mucked up or encountered some other disaster of your own making, for both men and women.
Over the 21st and 22nd of February 2008 1,052 people from the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.7% were female, 6.4% in their teens, 15.7% in their twenties, 31.0% in their thirties, 26.6% in their forties, 11.2% in their fifties, and 9.1% 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.
My “oh bugger!” moment was going to work and realising that today is actually a special holiday; we get four a year at work, and as yesterday (Thursday 20th March) was the spring equinox, a Japan public holiday, they decided to declare Friday a special holiday, so I turned up to a locked office! Oh bugger! Oh, and wifey did the women’s number 23 yesterday, remembering to hang out everything except my bath towel, although it was me rather than her who said “Oh bugger!”
By the way, I hope you don’t mind my use of language – I use the rule of thumb that I don’t write anything I wouldn’t want my mother reading, and as “oh bugger!” is just about the only swearword I’ve ever heard her use, if you are offended, please email my mother…
And for your enjoyment:
Or this link to YouTube for those with embedded objects turned off.
Ahh, excessive overtime, and especially the dreaded euphemistic-named “service overtime”, or unpaid overtime in proper English, is perhaps the biggest culture shock to foreign office workers when they come to Japan. We all have our pet theories about why, but this recent survey conducted by goo Research and reported on by CNET Japan into overtime and work efficiency perhaps answers some questions.
Between the 22nd and 24th of February 2008 1,080 members of the goo Research monitor panel employed as businesspeople completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 68.2% were male, 24.5% in their twenties, 24.9% in their thirties, 25.3% in their forties, and 25,3% aged fifty or older.
My employer is one of the rare companies that has embraced Work-Life Balance as a slogan at least. However, some recent news that I don’t think I should mention has revealed that they are about to take a very bold, perhaps even unique in Japanese large companies, step to address one issue regarding this balance. We shall see how it all pans out…
The title of the survey implies that there was some questions regarding how people view the effectiveness of overtime; outside crunch times there is a general perception amongst foreigners that the Japanese spin out an 8 hour working day over 12 or more hours, so I’d have loved to have seen the outcome of questions regarding that issue. Sadly, the original Japanese article did not report this aspect.
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I’ve not played anything online for years but perhaps I am missing out on something, judging by this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research into online gaming.
Over the 13th and 14th of March 2008 1,096 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.6% of the sample were male, 17.6% in their teens, 19.4% in their twenties, 16.1% in their thirties, 17.0% in their forties, 18.4% in their fifties, and 11.5% aged sixty or older.
Note that Q1 means computers only, not consoles or handheld machines.
In the comments for another article I got wind of a new (currently in closed beta) MMORPG, Hello Kitty Online, apparently a mix of RPG-type quests and guilds, puzzles, virtual property development, and an SNS.
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