I omitted to translate an earlier, more detailed, survey on this topic, so instead you’ll have to make do with the highlights from an article published on japan.internet.com regarding a survey conducted by goo Research into disasters.
Demographics
Between the 18th and 22nd of October 2007 1,086 members of goo Research’s online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.5% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 11.7% aged sixty or older.
Whilst we all hope that we don’t need it, there is always the risk of being hit by an earthquake, typhoon or other natural disaster in Japan. One important service offered by NTT is their Disaster Emergency Message Dial, basically an answering machine service that allows people to leave messages accessed through their home phone numbers. The linked site provides full English-language instructions on how to use it. Connected with this are the Broadband Disaster Message Board (web171), and the Mobile Disaster Message Boards, for DoCoMo, au, and SoftBank.
Note that the Broadband Disaster Message Board does not have an English version, which is pretty useless for relatives from overseas who might wish to check up on you, and, when you read the fine print at the bottom of the front page, you see that the recommended OSes are Windows 2000 SP4 and XP SP2, and the recommended broswers are Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0 only. Even better, you cannot interact with the buttons if you have JavaScript disabled, and the w3c validator dies trying to verify the code!
Following recent news that Google has been not just updating PageRank in the normal fashion, but also applying penalties to certain web sites, specifically for selling links for PageRank, and more specifically, for using Text Link Ads to do the selling. I noticed that Japan Probe, previously PageRank 5, is now PageRank 3.
Of course, in the big picture, PageRank in itself doesn’t really mean much, but for us second, third or fourth tier sites, PageRank provides a quick and dirty way of evaluating our worth.
Out of interest, let’s look at the top sites tagged with “japanese” and with inventory for sale at TLA’s web site, sorted by value. The TLA Current PageRank has not been updated recently. I’ve not published the names of sites I recognise so as not to point fingers at them. This table is sorted by PageRank order.
If your PageRank has changed, please leave a message on this thread. See Dig PageRank for a tool for doing mass checks.
My cell phone camera sees rare use, mostly when wifey borrows it to take pictures of food or me when she’s forgotten her own phone. One use she puts her own camera phone to is taking a photograph of the weather forecast on the television then forwarding it to me. I’m sure there must be better ways of letting me know what the weather will be like, but since we can send mails for free, it works for both of us! To see what the average person gets up to, MyVoice looked at the use of mobile phone still and motion cameras.
Demographics
Over the first five days of September 2007 13,602 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 17% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.
Both wifey and I have memory cards for our cell phones; in fact, she has a one gigabyte micro SD card which finds more use as an extra card for our main digital camera, but neither of us use the card for day-to-day storage, only for exporting (never importing!) photographs. Indeed, it would be interesting to find out how other people use their memory cards. Read the rest of this entry »
With Apple’s iPod touch being launched in Japan at the start of this month, October, (although the official Apple Store Japan web site seems to suggest there is a 7 to 10 day lead time for orders) japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into the iPod touch.
Demographics
On the 15th of October 2007 330 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 83.0% of the sample was male, 11.5% in their twenties, 34.5% in their thirties, 37.0% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.
A recent survey suggested that 40% wanted to buy an iPod touch, but given the figures below, not many have yet. The exact reasons for this might make for an interesting topic at a later date. In addition, now over 71% want an iPod touch (curiously enough, a greater percentage than those who know of it, which makes me a bit suspicious of the accuracy of this report), although the previous survey asked if they want to buy, this one just asked if they wanted. Read the rest of this entry »
Last year I translated an interesting survey on kimono, so as perhaps a followup, DIMSDRIVE Research recently took a look at the other Japanese national dress, the suit.
Demographics
Between the 22nd and 31st of August 2007 6,366 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.9% of the sample was female, 1.0% in their teens, 15.3% in their twenties, 35.8% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 6.1% aged sixty or older. In addition, 39.0% of the sample were company employees (including contract employees), 1.6% were executive or board level, 4.2% worked in the public sector, 9.2% were self-employed, 12.9% were part-time or caqsual, and 33.1% were others, which included housewives, students and retired people.
In Q7A, the “aging playboy” option is my translation of a phrase that has been in vogue recently, ちょいワル, choi waru, a shortened form of ちょい悪オヤジ, choi waru oyaji, literally “slightly bad old guy”, an aspirational phrase that is meant to appeal to the middle-aged men’s fashion and lifestyle magazine reading segment of the population. Thinking about western role models, George Cluney and Sean Connery in Italian tailored suits would perhaps be typical choi warui oyaji gaijins.
One suspects that in some of the answers in Q9, the male respondents may have been thinking more about birthday suits. Indeed, I couldn’t find images of many of them in said formal dress, so instead here’s a couple of other Japanese women in suits:
Last year I translated an interesting survey on kimono, so as perhaps a followup, DIMSDRIVE Research recently took a look at the other Japanese national dress, the suit.
Demographics
Between the 22nd and 31st of August 2007 6,366 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.9% of the sample was female, 1.0% in their teens, 15.3% in their twenties, 35.8% in their thirties, 27.6% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 6.1% aged sixty or older. In addition, 39.0% of the sample were company employees (including contract employees), 1.6% were executive or board level, 4.2% worked in the public sector, 9.2% were self-employed, 12.9% were part-time or caqsual, and 33.1% were others, which included housewives, students and retired people.
I personally hate suits, but own two; one gets dragged out for the very occasional business trip, and the other one is in reserve for funerals. Our office is casual or company uniform, but I am about the only person in the office who wears a shirt (open-necked) on a daily basis, which is perhaps a bit odd.
For the purposes of this survey, a suit was defined as a matching jacket and trousers or skirt. Read the rest of this entry »
Recently japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into browser start pages, in particular in this article, on settings on work computers.
Demographics
One the 16th of October 2007 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group who were employed in the private or public sectors completed a private online questionnaire. 83.1% were male, 10.6% in their twenties, 42.0% in their thirties, 33.8% in their forties, 11.8% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.
The official word is that my employers’ intranet works best with Internet Explorer, although I suspect that is code for “we can’t be bothered testing it with anything else”, and best is a relative term. Anyway, regardless of that, I use Opera as my primary browser as it is easy to switch off images and embedded Flash and other objects, not that I need to do that as I of course never ever visit any non-work-related sites. Actually, Opera 9 is banned because it contains a BitTorrent client which might spontaneously start spewing company secrets, or something. My start page is set to nothing at all, with my home browser set the same way. Internet Explorer is set to point to the intranet just because that’s what I mainly use it for.
Following some feedback on an earlier post, I’ve added in hyperlinks to SQs, as I’ve had at least two people mention my use of (to SQ) was confusing. I hope they help! Read the rest of this entry »
Looking for a cheap tour of Tokyo or the surrounding area this autumn? To help you choose where to go, goo Ranking decided to ask what under 10,000 yen Hato Bus tour from their autumn schedule people would like to go on. As is par for the course, there was no demographic information supplied barring that the fieldwork was carried out between the 25th and 27th of September 2007.
Over the first five days in September 2007 13,886 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 17% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 15% in their fifties. Sadly the percentage of married people is not reported.
I would say I’m most comfortable in my garden and my bedroom, especially now that we’ve just changed to winter sheets! For Q3, outside of sleeping (etc…) I don’t actually use our bedroom for anything. My ideal bedroom colour would be perhaps a pastel green. Read the rest of this entry »
I omitted to translate an earlier, more detailed, survey on this topic, so instead you’ll have to make do with the highlights from an article published on japan.internet.com regarding a survey conducted by goo Research into 
My cell phone camera sees rare use, mostly when wifey borrows it to take pictures of food or me when she’s forgotten her own phone. One use she puts her own camera phone to is taking a photograph of the weather forecast on the television then forwarding it to me. I’m sure there must be better ways of letting me know what the weather will be like, but since we can send mails for free, it works for both of us! To see what the average person gets up to, MyVoice looked at the 
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Recently japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into 
No, we’re not peering at 
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