世論 What Japan Thinks

This may seem a bit of a strange subject to handle on Christmas Day, but the 25th of the month is payday, and the last payday of the year includes a 源泉徴収表, gensenchoushuuhyou, or end of the year statement of earnings and tax paid (or a P60 for British people in the audience), which is an excuse for a slightly bumpy seque into a survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into final income tax returns, or 確定申告, kakutei shinkoku.

Demographics

On the 11th of December 2007 330 self-employed members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 66.4% were male, 6.4% in their twenties, 31.5% in their thirties, 40.6% in their forties, 16.4% in their fifties, and 5.2% in their sixties. You may have noticed that when JR Tokai Express Research has a survey with people drawn from employees in the public and private sector the male percentage is over 80%. It might be interesting to find out why there is a higher ratio of self-employed women in their monitor panel.

I don’t know if many foreigners are aware of it, but if you spend over 100,000 yen or so (sorry, I don’t have the exact figures!) over the last calendar year on medical bills, including doctors’ fees, prescription medicines and traveling expenses you can claim back tax on the extra money. There are of course exceptions like gold teeth, ningen dock (full preventitive checks taking from half a day to two days) and quackery, but it’s always worth saving your receipts just in case.
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With the end of the year approaching, let’s look back at another year of What Japan Thinks and highlight some of the more interesting facts and figures I have learnt about this year through the many surveys presented on this blog. So, without further ado, here are 26 statistics from 2007. Click through the link after the data to view the original post.

Advertising

Almost a third of those who have seen a search term on a television advertisement have actually performed a search for it.
Source

from Greg Palmer at flickr

Billy Blanks

Over 99% of women between 20 and 49 has at least heard Billy Blanks’ name.
Source

Cinema

Star Wars is men’s all-time favourite movie, Pirates of the Carribean women’s.
Source

Dialup

Just 1.4% of surveyed users access the internet from home via a bog-standard telephone analogue dialup line.
Source

Earthquakes

27.6% of Japanese keep a full bath-tub of water just in case of earthquakes.
Source
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As promised, here are reviews of the blogs that didn’t make the cut for the First Annual (anyone wish to sponsor thm?) Japan Blog of the Year Awards, roughly in the order that they were nominated. Reviews of the candidates will take place after voting finishes. Please remember to vote by midnight tonight, Christmas Eve, and remember that all commenters on that thread will be eligible for a drawing for a small prize!

By popular demand, here are two more late nominees that came too late after the final cut had been made:

Gaijin Smash: A massive troll about life in Japan. It doesn’t do anything for me, but he seems to have a massive fan base. Give it a read, you’ll either love hit or hate it!

Kid Ethnic: The absolutely new-to-me blog is rather infrequently updated, but it fair tickles my fancy. This one on Shinjo flogging coffee made me laugh out lond!

With the end of the year coming up and perhaps people’s wallets looking a little bare, let’s look back on the year with goo Ranking and see what men spent too much cash on and what women spent too much cash on

Demographics

I’ve managed to find demographics for these ranking surveys! Between the 21st and 22nd of November 2007 1,101 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 49.3% were male, 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.

Of course, the other survey I’d love to see is what people thought their spouses had spent far too much cash on this year!
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As promised, here are reviews of the blogs that didn’t make the cut for the First Annual (anyone wish to sponsor thm?) Japan Blog of the Year Awards, roughly in the order that they were nominated. Reviews of the candidates will take place after voting finishes. Please remember to vote, and remember that all commenters on that thread will be eligible for a drawing for a small prize!

RisingSunOfNihon: A blog about Japanese industry on the whole, with the occasional blatent search engine bait chucked in!

Keeping Pace in Japan: Interesting personal blog on running, politics, and life in general.

Chris’s English School. Yanai, Japan: Perhaps I need a new computer or browser, but pages with static background images are painful for me to scroll! Lots of pictures of Japanese kids learning English.

NihonHacks: I must admit to being a big fan of the site and I wanted to include it in the list of blogs to vote for, but… I wish I’d thought of this blog – great tips on how to live more frugally or more effectively in Japan.

The stereotypical Christmas feast in Japan is a bucket of fried chicken from Colonel Claus with a strawberry sponge for afters, but what is the real situation? In particular, Christmas Eve is a holiday this year due to the Emporer’s birthday falling on a Sunday, so the day off has been moved forward a day to the 24th of December, and it is Christmas Eve that gets celebrated rather than Christmas Day. To find out what people’s plans were, Macromill Inc reported on a survey it conducted into Christmas 2007.

Demographics

Over the 5th and 6th of December 2007 516 members of Macromill’s online monitor group resident within either Tokyo or the three surrounding prefectures of Chiba, Saitama or Kanagawa successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The group was split exactly 50:50 male and female, and 24.8% were in thier twenties, 25.2% in their thirties, 25.3% in their forties, and 24.8% in their fifties.

Note that when asked how people plan to spend Christmas, as noted above this refers to Christmas Eve, by chance a public holiday this year, not Christmas Day, a normal workday this and every other year.

The other Japanese Christmas tradition is for couples to go on a date, often ending up with an overnight stay at a hotel, usually a posh one.
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As promised, here are reviews of the blogs that didn’t make the cut for the First Annual (anyone wish to sponsor thm?) Japan Blog of the Year Awards, roughly in the order that they were nominated. Reviews of the candidates will take place after voting finishes. Please remember to vote, and remember that all commenters on that thread will be eligible for a drawing for a small prize!

Herro Flom Japan: I must admit that the name really grates on me! This is the very first (probably) podcast from Japan, and it’s now expanding into video too. I downloaded the latest podcast, recorded whilst walking through Tokyo; interesting talk, but also interesting background noises which were in fact rather distracting, but also fascinating trying to imagine where he was walking through!

Geisha, Interrupted: Interesting personal blog about life in Japan as a translator. I found this post rather thought-provoking.

Japan Focus: Not really a blog as such, but since someone nominated it, I’ll mention it regardless. A set of scholarly (and sometimes not so scholarly) articles on issues related to Japan.

LongCountdown.com: The first article had some interesting stuff on networking with other Japanese bloggers; I understand that everyone wants to get they eyeballs, but the problem is having too many networking opportunities – for instance there’s at least three English-language Japanese blog social bookmarking/digg-like things but each with only one or two votes per story.

Following on in a way from the recent survey on changes in internet services, this time japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into mobile phone usage in 2007.

Demographics

Over the 12th and 13th of December 2007 300 mobile phone-using members of the Cross Marketing monitor group successfully 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, and 20.0% in their fifties.

My number of emails is similar, although packet volume has increased due to getting a Deco-Mail (HTML graphic mail) compatible phone! Internet usage is slightly down, as the higher-end phone means I tend to get more graphic-heavy pages pushed at me. Voice calling is as non-existent as ever, despite a talking dog trying to persuade me otherwise! What about you lot?

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As promised, here are reviews of the blogs that didn’t make the cut for the First Annual (perhaps) Japan Blog of the Year Awards, roughly in the order that they were nominated. Reviews of the candidates will take place after voting finishes. Please remember to vote, and remember that all commenters on that thread will be eligible for a drawing for a small prize!

Shisaku: Politics with a cynical edge.

Global Talk 21: Sketch-writer style blogging on Japanese politics. Very interesting, and another blog I’ve added to my RSS reader thanks to this.

Japan Economy News: Ken’s got a really interesting (only if you’re into economics, of course) blog regarding news of the Japanese economy, not surprisingly. Not everyone’s cup of tea I would guess, but he’s also got an excellent magazine-style template that I’m busy trying to win a free copy of! (They may not actually be the same template, but they look closely related)

The Hopeless Romantic: Random thoughts on living in Japan.

Last year I looked at a survey on influenza issues, but this year it’s a different kind of virus, the computer sort, that we look at in a survey conducted by goo Research into 60-79 year old computer users and security matters.

Demographics

Over the 6th and 7th of December 2007 613 members of the goo Research monitor panel were interviewed. 50.1% were female, 73.6% in their sixties, and 26.4% in the seventies.

One-click fraud is a type of fraud perhaps not unique to Japan, but Google doesn’t turn up any reports from other countries when searching in English. Basically the idea is that you get a spam, or click on a link somewhere and end up at the target page which suddenly tells you you’ve registered and need to pay a vast sum of money for monthly membership, or they’ll send the boys round. This seems to work well in Japan due to some combination of unwillingness of the victims to cause a fuss and weak consumer protection and other law enforcement. Actually, my wife ended up on somewhere similar after filling in details on a prize draw advertised through Chikyuu no Arukikata’s web site (Japan’s top independent traveller guide brand) and had to change email addresses due to 40-plus emails per day pestering her to join a dating site. I told her to complain to Chikyuu no Arukikata for betraying her trust, but even though she is quite expert at flame mails in other cases, she seemed reluctant for some reason I couldn’t deduce.
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