世論 What Japan Thinks

With the 忘年会, bounenkai, end-of-year party season upon us and many of us perhaps having headed to our first one tonight flush with our winter bonuses, let’s take a quick look with goo Ranking at what male actions make women run a mile at drinking parties. The fieldwork for the survey was conducted over the 24th and 25th of October 2007 amongst female members of the goo Research monitor group. Note that the vast majority of activities here would result in the guy being slapped with a sexual harrassment suit in the West, and probably also in Japan, although the law is not as frequently invoked here.

Number 8 is perhaps a bit strange and culturally specific, and although thankfully I’ve not witnessed it myself, apparently after a quantity of alcohol Japanese men sometimes do remove their shirts or more. May these be the only undies you whip off for a young lady in the pub!

Anyway, I hope none of my readers got up to or suffered from the activities described within! You may want to cross-reference with previous survey on drunken old git behaviour.
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With the Winter bonus season upon us (I get mine tomorrow!) here is a timely survey from MacroMill Inc on this very subject, the Winter 2007 bonus.

Demographics

Over the 14th and 15th of November 2007 1,032 members of the MacroMill internet monitor group employed in either the public or private sector successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 20.0% of the sample were in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties. The sex ratio was not reported, however, although when JR Tokai Express Research use a similar sample base, over 80% are male. However, MacroMill tends to use a 50:50 split for their surveys, but this cannot be the case here as in Q4B, for instance, 534 men report getting a bonus, over half the sample size.

Half of my winter bonus has to go to paying my home loan, and the majority of the remained will end up replenishing funds in the bank to be spent on just normal living expenses, sadly. If I manage to get any discretionary spending, I think a DS and a Wii plus Wii Fit (saw it on the telly this morning – it looks great!) will be in order.
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The world is going digital, from digital television to digital audio, but what about one of the last hangovers from the analogue world, the humble calendar? With the end of the year approaching, will the desktop calendar move from on top of the PC to into the PC? To find out what’s happening in Japan, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into this very topic of calendars.

Demographics

On the 30th of November 2007 334 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor group employed in either the public or private sector successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 81.3% of the sample was male, 10.0% in their twenties, 39.0% in their thirties, 35.3% in their forties, 12.4% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties.

In my previous team we used to get a handful of free desktop calendars from a translator dispatch company, but now I suspect that with my employer’s heavy emphasis on compliance issues, these are treated as potential bribes or another method of receiving favourable treatment thus we are forbidden from accepting them.

On my home PC I occasionally download (and wifey does so often) wallpaper with a one- or two-month calendar featuring either Pinky or cute Neko no Kimochi cover models, although if you’re not a member you need to do a short survey before you get to the download page, I’m afraid, and the free samples for non-subscribers don’t have dates on them.

In January I translated an identical set of questions.
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Following on, I suppose, from the recent survey on bowel movements, MyVoice performed another survey, this time on perhaps one of the aftermaths of bowel movements, smells.

Demographics

Over the first five days of November 2007 19,910 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private online survey. 54% of the sample was female, 1% in their teens, 16% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 17% in their fifties.

In Q4 surely there must be a degree of respect for elders going on! Three or four of my bosses at work have spent many years perfecting that exquisite combination of stale beer, ciggies, coffee, natto, and general mouth rancidness that make my eyes water at twenty paces!

It might be interesting to cross-reference this against another MyVoice survey from a year and a half ago on deodorants.

Oh, and I haven’t a clue in Q5 and Q6 what a table is supposed to smell of!
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With many Japanese companies paying winter bonuses at the end of week, this might be a good time to look at a recent survey reported on japan.internet.com and conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into portable games machines.

Demographics

Over the 21st and 22nd of November 2007 300 members of the Cross Marketing online monitor group successfully competed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split exactly 50:50 male and female in each age group. These age groups were 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.

As I’ve probably mentioned too many times already (perhaps I should make an Amazon wish list so you can all buy me a present?) I really want to get the new red and black DS Lite. I have two Japanese learning titles waiting for me at home! Perhaps this weekend…?

One of the reasons, perhaps, for the good PSP figures in Q3 is that, as one can see from Q1, a lot of people already have a DS or DS Lite, therefore wanting a PSP makes sense. However, how many of them will actually go out and spend the money is open to debate.

Finally, in Q2, I get the impression that DS Lites are now in sufficient stock almost everywhere, but perhaps with the end of year spending spree coming up, it will get difficult to get your hands on again? You may want to cross-reference these figures with a similar question asked in March this year.
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Following on from a post a couple of weeks ago about this site getting Google-slapped and me highlighting that Japan Today had prominent paid links on its front page, I now see that Japan Today too has been hit by a three-point penalty, down to PageRank 4 from PageRank 7. As it has recently changed hands, I wonder how much the PageRank 7 figured in the evaluation of the sales price?

Additionally, I’ve had a question from one of my friends about what to do, as they have noticed a drop in traffic. First off, I have not noticed a drop myself; indeed Google Images and Yahoo! traffic are both up whilst standard Google search is holding steady and the keywords I want to rank for have been if anything improving, but as with all search engine issues the changes are usually subtle and take a few weeks to manifest themselves. However, my AdSense earnings have halved in the last month, but I don’t know how much of that is due to being Google-slapped and how much is due to other factors. Another friend in this niche who hasn’t been selling links has also mentioned their AdSense revenue has died.

If you have been slapped, one measure you can take is to remove all sold links and ask Google for a re-evaluation of your PageRank penalty. However, I am yet to see any definite evidence that the PageRank penalty is anything more than a cosmetic change; most Search Engine Optimisers judge displayed PageRank to be nothing more than a rough estimate of relevance and the slap is not a change to the core relevancy calculations but merely a tweak upon an output estimate.

My personal opinion (based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever!) is that Google is wanting to stop link dealers and paid post dealers using PageRank as part of their equation when evaluating what price to sell links or posts at. Here’s a good post from Twenty Steps on why he thinks Google did what they did.

However, if you want to get your PageRank back (but there’s no promises that this will work) you should drop all paid links, then through the Webmaster Tools at Google request reinclusion or re-evaluation of your site, and hope…

Looking at the Google Webmaster Guidelines, they say:

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

I stand by my links as they are relevant to the theme of the site; if someone wanted to advertise printer ink or used cars I’d reject these links for a lack of relevancy.

If you wish to risk getting fingerprinted and come to Japan, what things might you want to do? To find out what festivals or events Japanese would recommend to overseas visitors, a leading on-line consumer research company goo Research asked its monitor panel this very question.

Personally, I have only been to number 5, Daimonji (far too many people!) and number 27, the Japan Formula 1 Grand Prix. Which Japanese festivals would you recommend to tourists?

All photos below are courtesy of flickr.

Ranking results

Q: What Japanese festivals or events would you want to recommend to overseas visitors?

Rank	Festival		Photographer	Score
1	Aomori Nebuta Festival		autan	100
2	Sapporo Snow Festival		glazaro	83.8
3	Gion Matsuri		tkosaka	81.1
4	Awa Odori		T. J. M	65.1
5	Daimonji Gozan no Okuribi		masatsu	53.4

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I’m having trouble interpreting the results of this rather interesting survey from goo Ranking on to people in which occupation would you most like to say thanks to and hand them an energy drink. The survey was conducted over the 24th and 25th of October 2007, so it was well after Shinzo Abe disappeared from his job of running the country, so it cannot be a sympathy vote for him. However, is it thanks for the present incumbent, Yasuo Fukuda, who at age 71 should be tending his garden rather than trying to run the country, or is it just a general feeling that the top politicians need all the support they can get?
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It’s coming up to the new year, so naturally there are a number of New Year Postcard surveys coming out. This time it is japan.internet.com reporting on one by goo Research into nengajo, New Year Postcards – hey, wasn’t the last one also by goo Research?

Demographics

Over the 22nd and 23rd of November 2007 1,093 members of the goo Research online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.9% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

I ordered the first half of my New Year Cards last night, featuring Hello Kitty in a rat costume, of course. We bought from FujiFilm; if you are still to order, I’ve found an Amazon coupon for a discount on the basic price, free delivery and a 1,000 yen discount off your next order – we used a Cecile coupon, but it wasn’t as good value. Tonight we tried the second half using Kodak, but the web site is pretty useless and we found it impossible to check out and buy the cards!

Instead of the usual graph pictured at the top of the article I’ve got a picture of a mobile phone strap featuring a commemorative Year of the Rat Cat, Kitty chan herself. This can be ordered and delivered all around the world in time for the New Year from the internet’s finest vendor of… ack, you probably all know the sales pitch by heart by now; it’s just 420 yen from Strapya.

Finally, the kanji for the Year of Rat is 子, read as ko.
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With Kirin having previously announced a price rise in beer next February, and with Asahi today also making a similar announcement, it is timely to look at this survey conducted by goo Research in conjunction with the Yomiuri Shimbun into the rise in the price of beer.

Demographics

Little demographic information was given for this survey, bar that 1,092 people over the age of 20 were interviewed at the start of November 2007. Not even the sample sizes for the questions were listed!

It may be interesting to compare the results of this survey with a recent one on the rise in instant ramen prices.

One thing I’ve never understood is that comparable beers from all the three big brewers are the same price, and they are sold at almost the same price everywhere from the largest megastore to the smallest vending machine. Surely they cannot be running a cartel?

Note that currently a 350 millilitre can of beer retails for about 207 yen from a convenience store.
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