世論 What Japan Thinks

My mother sends me clippings of the Economist regularly, and in this month’s batch was a very interesting article on how 200 years ago it was Westerners, mostly Amercians, who were encroaching Japan’s sovereignty – rather than today when Japan fishes (or should that be mammals, if that noun is verbable) in Australia’s self-declared sovereign region – to take whales, with at the peak 550 ships sailing around the still-closed country picking off the local cetaceans.

As for whaling around Japan, vestigial echoes reverberate. Every northern winter, Japan faces barbs for sending a whaling fleet into Antarctic waters. And why, asks the mayor of Taiji, a small whaling port, should Japanese ships have to go so far, suffering international outrage? Because, he says, answering his own question, the Americans fished out all the Japanese whales in the century before last.

Just to tie this into surveys, here’s a story from this time last year on an opinion poll regarding Japanese attitudes to whaling.

Even though I haven’t bought any new bits for my self-built home PC since I got married, I can still recite the key specs: 800 (or is it 900?) MHz Athlon, 80 GB hard disk, and 640 MB memory, although I can understand why there was so many don’t knows in this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into home computer specs.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 13th of January 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel employed in the public or private sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.3% of the sample was male (this figure is significantly lower than the usual 80% to 85% male percentage in other JR Tokai Express Research surveys of salaried workers), 21.2% in their twenties, 38.2% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, 5.8% in their fifties, and 9.7% in their sixties.

Note that in Q1 most people take part in these surveys through their home computers, so that figure cannot be extrapolated to cover the wider population. I am one of the 26.4% who share their home PC, but if I ever manage to make a decent amount of cash online, my first purchase will be a nice portable for myself, then perhaps a dockable for wifey.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Trade Union Congress in the UK recently called for workers to be allowed some MySpace time, and one gets the impression that in the USA the ability to use company resources for personal internet access and private telephone calls is a fundamental human right, but what of Japan? A recent report from japan.internet.com on a survy conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into employee internet access management shone some light on this topic.

Demographics

On the 16th of January 2008 330 people from the JR Tokai Express Research monitor pool employed in private enterprises or other organisations as directors, senior management, personnel, or in other management or planning roles completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 75.8% were male, 4.5% in their twenties, 27.9% in their thirties, 44.2% in their forties, 19.1% in their fifties, and 4.2% in their sixties.

Our rules are actually set in place mostly by personnel or other management divisions in order to try to comply with J-SOX issues, with a bit extra from the MIS department. Many of our policies are on paper sensible (though over-stringent), but the justification they add is often laughable. My favourite is their restriction on writing to bulletin boards; apparently someone wrote over 20 messages one day to a train-spotter message board and the owner complained about being flooded with traffic… My pet hate is that Skype is forbidden, even though for people on business trips it can be the cheapest way to keep in touch with family (and the office), due to paranoia about file-sharing and flooding the local network if it becomes a hub, but both these options can be turned off. I did consider renaming notepad.exe to skype.exe or winny.exe just to put the wind up the MIS department, but I suspect they don’t have a sense of humour. Oh, and they also forbid Opera 9 due to the risk of the inbuilt BitTorrent client leaping into life and sharing the whole hard drive.

I in no way whatsoever work on the basis of if it isn’t blocked by the proxy, it’s fair game.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’d be lost without car navigation, as it were, and the devices they put in as standard in all Toyota rent-a-cars are pretty darned good, although I occassionally get one with a slightly out of date map that misses out a new bypass or two. To find out what the average Japanese person thinks, MyVoice performed its third survey on car navigation usage.

Demographics

Over the first five days of December 2007 14,643 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 16% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 15% in their fifties.

When I hired a car last year in Austria it came with a Hertz NeverLost device, but I couldn’t for the life of me get it to work, and having only a German instruction manual didn’t help in the slightest. It seemed to be little more than a GPS to me, with no route planning functionality whatsoever, and if I’d actually paid to rent the device I’d have asked for my money back after having been spoilt by the Japanese devices. I managed eventually to find my way thanks to a Google Maps printout, though.
Read the rest of this entry »

As I work in the Osaka area, the outcome of the Osaka prefectural governor election (this Sunday 27th January 2008) will have some effect on me, and with some guy off the telly as the front-runner, I sincerely hope he won’t turn out to be another Hideo Higashikokubaru (Sonomanma Higashi) and appear on the box every night. In his defense, I saw that over the first year of his governorship he has been credited with giving the local economy a 100 billion yen (1 billion US dollar) boost

The first figure that the report from the Yomiuri Shimbun picked up on was the intention to vote. A healthy two in three said they would definitely turn out, with slightly more men that women saying they would vote. By age group, 78% of the over-seventies would definitely be voting, with 69% of those in their fifties would also definitely vote. However, only 43% of those in their twenties had definite plans, although another 49% said they’d try to vote, making 92% in total of all young people who might participate in the vote.
Read the rest of this entry »

You may remember last month I published a survey on what makes Japanese women run a mile, so now it’s time to look with goo Ranking at what female actions make men run a mile at drinking parties.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 24th of December 2007 1,094 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private online questionnaire. 45.6% of the sample was male, 8.8% were in their teens, 15.6% in their twenties, 29.1% in their thirties, 26.8% in their forties, 10.7% in their fifties, and 9.0% aged sixty or older. Obviously only the male 45.6%, or 499 people, answered this particular question. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

The most obvious difference between this and the previous survey is groping! It was the top hate for women, but the bottom one for men. Another notable exception from the men’s list is the number 7 from the women’s list, pestering someone for their phone number! My top two would have to be smoking and poor table manners.
Read the rest of this entry »

I used to have athlete’s foot, but Japanese over-the-counter medicines cured it pretty promptly and it has never returned, mainly due, I suspect, to living in much more hygenic conditions since I got married! To find out about festering feet in Japan and other issues, Yahoo! Japan Value Insight conducted a survey into what is known as switch OTC medicines, which means medicines with active ingredients that have switched from being prescription only to being also sold Over The Counter.

Demographics

Between the 13th and 15th December 2007 600 members of the Yahoo! Japan Value Research online monitor panel successfully completed a survey. Exactly 50.0% were male, and 33.3% were in their thirties, 33.3% in their forties, and 33.3% in their fifties. Each age group was also split 50:50 male and female. In addition exactly 50.0% had used OTC medicines for athlete’s foot within the last six months; I presume that these users were evenly distributed by sex and age.

I better have a short disclaimer just in case: I am not a health professional, and nothing within this article should be taken as medical advice, or even as accurate information. Please consult a doctor or pharmacist before taking any medicines, even over the counter ones, in order to avoid drug interactions or other problems. Mentions of any products or links to external sites does not imply a recommendation or a vouching for the quality or even safety of the products or sites.
Read the rest of this entry »

I just read an article on IT Media about music sales figures for 2007, published by the RIAJ, the Recording Industry Ass. of Japan.

The total units sold (CD, DVD, VHS, vinyl, etc) for the year were down 8% compared to last year at 318.66 million disks, with revenue down 4% to 391.1 billion yen (over 3.5 billion US dollars), making an average price per disk (or tape, etc) of 1,227 yen, or just over 11 US dollars. Note that this includes both singles and albums. Why the average earnings per disk increased by 4% is not discussed.

Sales of audio-only recordings were down 10% to 266.82 million disks, with a 5% revenue drop to 333.3 billion yen. From that total CD sales were down 10% to 260.34 million disks (representing 97.5% of all sales) and revenue down 5% to 327.2 billion yen. Album sales dropped 11% to 198.65 million disks with revenue down 5% to 280.2 billion yen, making an average price per disk of 1,410 yen or almost US$13 per disk. The biggest loser was Western music, which saw a drop of 23% in unit sales, representing a 17% revenue cut.

On the other hand, music videos were up 6% to 51.85 million disks or tapes with revenue up only 2% to 57.8 billion yen, representing about a 4% drop in price per unit. From that figure, almost all the sales were of DVDs, up 6% to 51.53 million disks with revenue up 3% to 57.4 billion yen.

The sales figures for pay downloads are scheduled to be released towards the end of February.

I think all my readers know my position on the trustworthiness or otherwise of Wikipedia; what I trust as an information source is the Beeb, followed by a few UK newspapers. For information about Japan in English, quite frankly I cannot really trust any commercial source, and those with user feedback are in fact one of the reasons I started WJT. To see what the Japanese themselves trust, as part of their 132nd Ranking Research, DIMSDRIVE Research asked what sources of information people could trust.

Demographics

Between the 19th and 27th of December 2007 4,044 members of the DIMSDRIVE Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.5% were female, 13.6% in their twenties, 31.5% in their thirties, 34.6% in their forties, 13.6% in their fifties, and 5.8% aged sixty or older.

Here, the trust being investigated is the reliability or usefulness of the information provided by the site, I believe. Given the high newspaper readership in Japan, it is very surprising that newspapers rate quite low, beaten by portals (which use these very newspapers as their sources!) and even shopping sites!

Other interesting results outside the top 10 were that the Yomiuri Online was the number three newspaper at position 23. kakaku.com was number 13, my favourite comparision shopping and user review site. For communities, mixi was 20th, beaten by the cesspit that is 2 channel, a bulletin board that caters on the whole for racists and tinfoil hats; young men seemed to be those that trusted there the most.

Read the rest of this entry »

Top of my list of electrical items to buy for the house is a HDR, or Hard Disk Recorder, the name commonly used for PVRs, Personal Video Recorders, or TiVo-like devices. This survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Cross Marketing or television program recording looks at how these HDRs are used in Japan.

Demographics

Over the 9th and 10th of January 2008 300 members of the Cross Marketing online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 50.0% male, with 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

I’ve heard people in Japan talk of how their lives have changed with the advent of the HDR; the biggest plus is for people who have children, as kids can’t wait, but now the television can. When their kid needs attention, the live broadcast can be paused, the child attended to, then the program resumed. Secondly, lots of children’s programs can be saved to disk, and their favourite programs called up at the touch of the button, and scenes they enjoy can be repeated over and over again.
Read the rest of this entry »