From kimono to keitai; research Japanese facts and figures through translated opinion polls and surveys.
Just as a note to my readers (and as a prompt to the search engines) I’d like to highlight that I’ve started a news round-up blog on the topic of trusted computing. It’s a subject I’m interested and involved in, so it’s useful for me as an archive of news and developments in the world of trusted computing.
Read more on: Site News
I don’t think I’ve mis-sent email last year, and I can only think of two incidents in the last few years where I have. One was in the office sending to my ex-team instead of my current team, so no problem, but the other was one I meant to send privately to a single person on a mailing list but I accidentally sent it to all, complete with a none-to-flattering portrayal of the list owner. Surprisingly enough I was summarily banned… Sadly, this recent report on japan.internet.com rearding a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into mis-sent electronic mail at the workplace doesn’t dwell on the consequences suffered!
On the 13th of March 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel employed in either the public or private sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 81.2% of the sample was male, 8.8% in their twenties, 39.4% in their thirties, 38.8% in their forties, 11.8% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their sixties.
I’m surprised in Q1SQ2 that as many as a third of wrongly-addressed mail recipients replied to say the mail was incorrectly sent! At work we are supposed to set our mail programs to display a confirmation message before sending to give you a last chance to review data, although I don’t know how effective that is, or indeed if many people actually bother with it.
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With the hay fever season upon us, and predictions of between three to five times the amount of cedar pollen flying around compared to last year, and with yellow sand from China also paying a visit, this recent survey from DIMSDRIVE Research into hay fever is quite timely.
Between the 6th and 14th of February 2008 10,665 members of the DIMSDRIVE Monitors completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample was female, 1.2% in their teens, 14.9% in their twenties, 35.8% in their thirties, 29.1% in their forties, 13.3% in thei fifties, and 5.7% aged sixty or older.
Pictured above is Hello Kitty-branded Hana (nose) Celeb lotion-impregnated tissues that may or may not prevent redness after blowing one’s nose a lot while suffering from hay fever.
The thing that irritates me the most about hay fever in others is the Japanese reluctance to blow their noses in public, as it is too embarrassing compared to pulling a face as one makes sniffing noises at regular intervals. It’s almost enough to get me over my dislike of MP3 players and drown out the rest of the carriage on the ride home.
I don’t get cedar hay fever fortunately, although I do have a couple of other allergies that usually result in a runny nose and the occassional sneeze.
Last year I looked at a similar survey into hay fever by MyVoice that might be a useful cross-reference.
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Here’s a fun topic for a Sunday evening from the masters of silliness, goo Ranking, looking at the moment after one passed 30 years old when one felt one’s age, for both men and women.
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. Presumably those under thirty were excluded from the sample. 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 personally don’t really worry about feeling my age; there’s not really anything that can be done about it, and brooding over it just makes me feel depressed. If I had to pick an answer, I’d probably say it’s not being able to stay out, or more likely, stay on the computer until 4 am then recover easily, although I think that is partially age and partially married life…
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I’m yet to go pake-hodai in Japan; pake-hodai, or パケ放題, is the DoCoMo trademarked (I think) term which means as many data packets as you want, but it has passed into the language as the generic term for fixed rate plans. However, if this survey recently reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh into fixed-price cellphone data packet plans is to be believed, almost three in five Japanese pay a fixed amount per month for their data.
Between the 6th and 10th of March 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Exactly 50:50 of the sample were male and female, 20.0% were 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% in their sixties.
These all-you-can-eat deals have two rather expensive exceptions to their coverage; first is using the cellphone as a modem – this gets charged at normal call rates, and second is the so-called full browser, a more fully-featured browser that can view standard computer-targeted sites in all their glory – to get these packets for free, you need to upgrade your plan to one covering the full browser too.
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I run an ad blocker, although I keep Google ads live (and I hope you do too!) as they are mostly pretty lightweight and quick to load, and most importantly usually text-only. I do very occasionally click search ads but don’t really find them that useful, and this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and performed by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into web search showed that a lot of Japanese do too.
Over the 3rd and 4th of March 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.3% of the sample was male, 3.6% in their teens, 15.2% in their twenties, 37.6% in their thirties, 25.8% in their forties, 9.1% in their fifties, 5.8% in their sixties, and 3.0% aged seventy or older.
Note that because many television and print advertisements feature search keywords rather than URLs, rather than engage in SEO activities to naturally boost a product’s home page the companies buy advertising space on the major search engines, thus, perhaps, Japanese people pay more attention to the sponsored links.
From what I’ve heard, if you want to advertise Google of course gives you the largest audience, but Yahoo!’s customers are more click-happy and keen to buy, although Yahoo! has a higher minimum cost per click charge. MSN/Windows Live seems actually to be the best from an overall package point of view, but looking at the results below, if you’re trying to sell in Japan you won’t see much business!
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With Toshiba having thrown in the towel on HD DVD leaving the market for next-generation high-capacity optical storage to the Blu-ray consortium of manufacturers, what will the consumer do? This recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into Toshiba’s withdrawl of HD DVD tried to find out.
On the 11th of March 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group employed in either the public or private sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 83.0% of the sample was male, 10.9% in their twenties, 40.3% in their thirties, 35.2% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.
I’m surprised in Q1 that almost three times as many in this sample bought an HD DVD rather than a Blu-ray player. Was it only overseas that HD DVD died? I’ll have to look into that…
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This is a rather short but still interesting survey from goo Research, conducted in conjunction with the Mainichi Shimbun, into the proposed reforms to the national curriculum, particularly with regard to elementary school education.
Over the 29th of February and the 1st of March 2008 1,069 members of the goo Research online monitor group aged 20 or older were randomly-selected and completed a private internet-based questionnaire. More detailed demographics were not given.
Some of the reforms proposed are outlined in this article from the Japan Times.
These changes are to address the drop in academic level in international tests (or is it that other countries are improving, or a mix of both?) by studying more. Looking at the league leader Finland, it can be seen that there are neither long school hours nor much pressure, whereas Japan’s solution seems to be adding more hours and more pressures. I’ve seen television programmes investigating Japanese education, and the problem teachers identify is too much overtime for them to be able to prepare for lessons or to be at their best when teaching. Overtime has indeed steadily increased over the decades, so more hours in classes and a new curriculum to learn is not going to fix that.
Most foreigners I know who teach in schools also highlight the lack of classroom dicipline and too many events (sports day, culture days, etc), the preparation for which disrupt teaching schedules for both teachers and students.
The teaching of pi equals three is actually true to a certain extent. In the current guidelines, teachers should use 3.14, but in certain circumstances (what circumstances, the curriculum guidelines do not say) three may be used.
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One of Junichiro Koizumi’s (a recent Prime Minister of Japan) legacies are the twin energy-saving initiatives, Cool Biz for the summer, and in this survey conducted by NRC (Japan Research Centre), Warm Biz.
Between the 30th of January and the 11th of February 2008 1,200 people from NRC’s online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 605 were feamel, 75 were in their teens, 181 in their twenties, 215 in their thirties, 184 in their forties, 221 in their fifties, 192 in their sixties, and 132 in their seventies.
Our office is sure to stick up the posters every summer and winter promoting the campaigns, although the effort put into carrying them out is minimal, if not often nonexistant. Today, as most days of the winter, the temperature in the office was a comfortable 24 degrees Celcius, 4 degrees over the recommended maximum. Last night’s and this morning’s train was also rather hot, although that could have had something to do with both times being jammed in tight!
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I’ve never taken part in online auctions myself, although I’ve got a bit of rubbish high quality pre-owned goods that I could always get rid of to bring in a few extra pennies. However, it seems that a large minority of Japanese are busy buying and selling, if this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc on auctions is to be believed.
On the 6th of March 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor pool successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample was female, 17.0% in their twenties, 42.1% in their thirties, 23.3% in their forties, 9.1% in their fifties, and 8.5% in their sixties.
In a survey last week I commented on how a surprisingly high percentage of Japanese spend most online time on Yahoo! but this suggests many of them are busy with auctions!
If you want to take part in Japanese auctions, but you live overseas or cannot read Japanese too well, I usually recommend Rinkya as somewhere that provides a bidding and forwarding service for these sorts of buyers. I’ve not personally used their services, and I’ve indeed not even seen any reviews of their service, and they are not cheap, but if you need items from Japan they seem a good place to check out.
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