世論 What Japan Thinks

I rent a car about twice or thrice a year, and did in fact win a free one day rental of a Voxy from Toyota Rent-a-Car recently, and this summer I finally applied for an ETC, Electronic Toll Collection, card that interfaces with the box in all Toyota rental cars to allow you to automatically pay the tolls. The first time we used it we got two 200 yen refunds for a 700 yen charge, which was nice. If you want to rent from Toyota (a bit expensive, but their cars are very nicely turned out and all have car navi, and the Prius especially is a really pleasant drive) I advice applying online for a Hertz #1 Card, as you’ll get a 10% discount and with three rentals in Japan a year you get upgraded to gold status (I hope!) and nice bonuses if you rent in Europe or the US. Today’s survey is from DIMSDRIVE Research and is about not car rental, but ETC.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 22nd of November 2007 7,287 members of the DIMSDRIVE Research monitor panel who had a car for private use completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.8% of the sample was female, 0.9% in their teens, 16.2% in their twenties, 37.1% in their thirties, 28.1% in their forties, 12.8% in their fifties, and 4.9% aged sixty or older.

Note that there are two components needed to use the ETC system; first, you need a card reader and transmitter to talk to the toll gate, then you need a special ETC card, usually tied to either your bank account or credit card account. Some credit card companies add the ETC functionality to a credit card, but others issue separate cards.

There’s one big puzzle regarding a highway near me; if you ever watch or listen to the traffic news during holiday periods there is always a report of 20 or 30 km tailbacks on the Chuugoku Highway at the Takarazuka Tunnel near Osaka. Having traversed this area, I can report that almost every time I go through that tunnel there is some sort of slowness. However, there are no turn-offs at that point and the road doesn’t narrow, dip or twist drastically, so why is that point a bottleneck? Last year I saw an in-train advertisement magazine with a teaser headline asking “Why is there always a traffic jam at the Takarazuka Tunnel?”, but I never bothered to buy a copy, so I am still scratching my head.
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Anyone who has been in Japan (or has been reading this blog) for any length of time will be aware of how often QR Codes, these square 2D bar codes, appear in magazine advertisements and promotional flyers. However, one aspect that I haven’t seen investigated up until now has been what other methods do people use to access these URLs. To rectify this, I present a translation of a report from japan.internet.com on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into mobile search.

Demographics

Over the 19th and 20th of December 2007 300 mobile phone users from the Cross Marketing monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. Exactly 50% of the sample was male, and exactly 20% were in their teens, 20% in their twenties, 20% in their thirties, 20% in their forties, and 20% in their fifties.

Note that in Q1 the number sending an empty email seems perhaps rather high. There could be two explanations for this; first, in-train advertisements do not, on the whole, feature QR codes, perhaps for reason of it being embarrassing to take a photo with the accompanying sound; second, sometimes QR codes encode an email address rather than a URL, so in these cases some of the respondents described the final action.
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One of my blogging New Year Resolutions is to network more – indeed just network full stop – so one way is to give something to the community of Japanese bloggers that doesn’t quite exist yet, despite some action towards that goal.

Some of you might have heard of JapanSoc, a digg-like social bookmarking thingie for Japan-related news stories, but it seems to be suffering from a lack of readers. So, in order to spread awareness of its existence and to increase the number of stories posted and therefore voted on and clicked-through to, I’ve written a small FeedBurner FeedFlare that puts a “JapanSoc It!” button at the bottom of each post.

If you as a blog publisher want to use it, sign up to both FeedBurner and JapanSoc if you haven’t already done so, then from your feed’s FeedBurner menu select the Optimize tab along the top, then the FeedFlare option on the left. Look for the edit field with the “Add New Flare” button beside it, and type into the box and press the button. Now, everyone who reads your feed will have the opportunity to submit your stories to JapanSoc.

This is an unofficial add-in and I’ve only previously hinted to Nick that I was doing something for his site! If you want to know why you should use it, Nick posted today on boosting traffic with JapanSoc. Oh, and perhaps Nick might like to make this suggested change to the submit.php page to handle resubmissions, or even do something like this.

If you as an RSS feed consumer want to use it, sign up to JapanSoc and whenever you see the “JapanSoc It!” button on a good story (like this one?) in your RSS reader, just press the button and submit it.

If you don’t use an RSS reader, try Google Reader for size.

Note that another similar site, TokyoGraph Link, doesn’t seem to support automation, so I cannot provide a widget for that.

From today, normal service will be resumed at 世論 What Japan Thinks after the New Year holidays. So, without further ado, let’s look at the first Silly Sunday survey of the New Year; here goo Ranking looked at break-up reasons people just couldn’t get their heads around, covering both what men hear from their girlfriends and what women heard from their boyfriends.

Demographics

Over the 21st and 22nd of November 2007 1,101 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.7% of the sample was female, 6.2% in their teens, 15.4% in their twenties, 30.2% in their thirties, 27.1% in their forties, 11.0% in their fifties, and 10.3% aged sixty or older. Note that the score reported is the relative number of votes each choice got, not the percentage of the sample that chose each option.

I’ll not relate any personal stories here, but I did once fix up a mate with a friend of my wife’s (thankfully she doesn’t speak English so she won’t be reading this blog!) but he suddenly chickened out, so we had to tell her that he had been transferred, which always struck me as a hopelessly transparent excuse
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Chocolate; I couldn’t live without it. Although last year I looked at a number of chocolate-related surveys, and with Valentine’s Day coming up soon I’ll no doubt look again next month, I hope that like me, you just can’t get enough of chocolate even in survey form, as in this report from MyVoice on chocolate image.

Demographics

Over the first five days of December 2007 14,628 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 16% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 15% in their fifties.

In Q6, I’ve heard various bits of quackery associated with chocolate, but never that it protects against tooth decay or hayfever!

What’s your favourite Japanese chocolate-based snack? I’m a Pocky person, although I don’t eat it as much as I’d like.

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All the winners have been contacted, but I’m too busy having a holiday to do much – please bare with me as we look at mini-reviews of all the blogs that didn’t quite make it. Last up is the personal blogs. This is the hardest to review by definition, as one just might not find someone else’s life interesting! Fortunately for me, all the blogs here do not fall into the uninteresting category.

Rocking in Hakata: I’m a fan of this blog and this blogger – a very interesting look at a slice of life somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Next time he comes to the Kansai I’ll have to get him to buy me a drink.

Watashi to Tokyo / Mari’s Diary: Another blog I’m a big fan of. She rounds-up news from both Japan and abroad with short summaries of the stuff that tickles her fancy. Her blog has a nice and simple clean design, and it always brightens up my day when she posts.

Blue Lotus: This is a blog that’s new to me! It revolves mostly around food and photography. A very personal slice of her life is presented in words and pictures, so please visit and see if it takes your fancy.

jeansnow.net: I must admit that when I first saw this blog I read the title as “Jeans Now”, which struck me as a rather odd name for a blog on Japan… An excellently designed blog, as one would expect from someone who follows design and pop culture in Japan. Lots of interesting stuff, including reviews of latest magazine issues in assorted genres. Lots to learn about here!

I noticed with these four sites also that they all had their RSS feed buttons hidden away; the use of feeds is really the best way to get loyal readers, so I think they should move their buttons a bit further up the pages – having said that, jeansnow.net has over 2,000 readers regardless, so take all my advice with a pinch of salt!

Although I mostly pick the silly surveys from goo Ranking, they do occasionally cover serious subjects, with this recent one on expectations for Japan in the future, specifically what people think politicians should be putting some effort into.

Demographics

Over the 21st and 22nd of November 2007 1,101 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.7% of the sample was female, 6.2% in their teens, 15.4% in their twenties, 30.2% in their thirties, 27.1% in their forties, 11.0% in their fifties, and 10.3% aged sixty or older. Note that the score reported is the relative number of votes each choice got, not the percentage of the sample that chose each option.

Although the title of the survey page from goo Ranking specifically includes the word politics, number 5 is rather non-political, or if it is meant to be political, Singapore springs to mind as a country that regulates the manners of the citizens, which may not be a very good example to follow. On the other hand, a lot of existing legislation gets ignored as penalties are either minor or non-existant, so perhaps this is a call for more enforcement of smoking in non-smoking zones, switching off mobiles when required, etc?

I think that addressing issues regarding worker abuse (and self-abuse) where unpaid overtime is the norm, by giving some teeth to unions; indeed I’d like to see unions being penalised for not bothering to stand up against unpaid overtime! What would you like to see from the politicians?
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あけましておめでとうございます！ Here’s to another year of surveys from the interesting, weird, wonderful but sometimes downright boring world of Japanese surveys. Let’s kick off the New Year (I really am writintranslating this at about 1 am on New Year’s Day) with goo Rankings looking at what people didn’t quite manage to do last year but will try again to do this year.

Demographics

Over the 21st and 22nd of November 2007 1,101 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.7% of the sample was female, 6.2% in their teens, 15.4% in their twenties, 30.2% in their thirties, 27.1% in their forties, 11.0% in their fifties, and 10.3% aged sixty or older.

I actually translated this survey last year too. It may be interesting to compare the quality and the fact that the top six answers are identical.
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It seemed to have been popular last year, so I thought I’d remind you all that you can buy a lucky bag, or in Japanese, 福袋, fukubukuro, from Strapya filled with 18 cellphone straps to a value of over $130 for just $27 or so (depending on exchange rates), a saving of 80% on the retail price.

Help yourself to a bargain (and help out me) buy picking one up today!

Whilst I get in contact with the winners of each group, I’ll do mini-reviews of all the blogs that didn’t quite make it. This was one group that didn’t get many nominations – is the topic not interesting, or is there a lack of bloggers, or some combination of the two? I was hoping to discover more blogs myself through this category.

Digital World Tokyo: I love their logo and the clean site design, barring the distracting humping dog in the corner… Lots of the latest tech news from Japan, and this is another site that I really should nick layout and presentation ideas from!

Tokyomango: Another bright and breezy blog, focusing on the weirder side of technology. Slipper pong was a revelation to me.

blognation Japan: Oops, this site has died; see TechCrunch for more details. That’s a shame, as the writer, Robert, has good ideas on how to make the Japan blogging community work, so hopefully he’ll reappear somewhere else.