世論 What Japan Thinks

This is a subject where I think stereotypes diverge greatly from the reality. Ask someone what the Japanese eat and you get tales of lots of vegetable-based side dishes lovingly prepared, but if you observe the reality you’ll find that fast foods and fried foods abound, and vegetables are often limited to just a lettuce leaf or a teacup-sized salad of sliced cabbage. To find out more about this subject, DIMSDRIVE Research recently performed a survey on vegetables.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 26th of July 2007 8,135 members of DIMSDRIVE Research’s monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.0% of the sample was female, 0.8% in their teens, 14.9% in their twenties, 35.5% in their thirties, 28.5% in their forties, 14.1% in their fifties, and 6.2% aged sixty or older. In addition, 12.8% lived alone, 24.0% lived with one other person, 25.6% with two others, 24.1% with three others, and 13.5% with four or more other people.

Supermarket vegetable quality is very variable; I sometimes use Jusco or Daiei, and find that most of the time their veggies are average to poor quality. However, right opposite Jusco is Kohyo, a slightly more upmarket chain who are just as cheap, if not cheaper, than Jusco yet have so much higher quality. The best I’ve found in town was a farmer’s co-op shop that was almost half the price of the nearest supermarket.

In Q3SQ4, I was suprised to see that country or area of origin of food was relatively low on the list despite the recent scares about Chinese foods being laced with chemicals and the amount of emphasis that the average Japanese seems to place on foods from particular traditional localities in Japan.
Read the rest of this entry »

The last time I looked at Wikipedia (just two days ago it was), it was wrong, and in addition the official building name is actually HEP FIVE, all in capitals, I believe. To see how the Japanese react to Wikipedia, japan.internet.com reported on the third regular monthly survey on Wikipedia conducted by goo Research.

Demographics

Between the 3rd and 7th of September 2007 1,078 members of goo Research’s online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.4% of the sample was male, 16.4% in their teens, 17.9% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, and 28.0% aged fifty or older.

Just to stand on my soapbox for a minute, I think bloggers who link to Wikipedia are just being lazy. One gets no brownie points for linking to it, and in fact you are perhaps weakening your own article and strengthening Wikipedia in the search engine rankings. Conversely, if one links to another blogger who appears more knowledgeble on the subject, you are making contact with someone human, leaving a trackback in their blog that might result in a couple of new visitors to your site, and you may find the blogger will link back to you at a later date to return the favour.

In Q1SQ2, I think “other” is the correct answer! Wikipedia is by design unverified and unverifiable, so to ask the question implies a misunderstanding of the concept behind it.
Read the rest of this entry »

This rather revealing ranking survey by goo Ranking looked at what expectant Japanese women hope their husbands can do regarding childcare. I think the average western person (both male and female) may be surprised at how basic many of the hoped-for actions are. The fieldwork was conducted between the 20th and 24th of July 2007, but no further demographic information was given. Do any of my readers have first-hand experience of Japanese fathers as I cannot really believe that such basic tasks need to be wished for!
Read the rest of this entry »

According to recent news, in 2006 Japanese movies took in more revenue at the box office than foreign films for the first time for 20 years, although it must be noted that the cinema-going frequency in Japan is still much lower than most of Western Europe and the USA. To understand more about Japanese habits, Yahoo! Japan Value Insight recently performed a survey on this topic of film consumption.

Demographics

Between the 10th and 24th of August 2007 Yahoo! Japan Value Insight published an open survey through the menuing system of NTT DoCoMo’s iMode mobile phone menuing system. 3,604 people self-selected themselves to take part in this survey; 57.9% were female, 5.6% in their teens, 30.3% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 19.3% in their forties, and 3.6% aged fifty or older.

The movie rankings in Q5 are rather interesting; I never understood why Japan loved Armageddon so much, both men and women, it seems. Men chose just one Japanese live-action movie in their top ten, whereas women chose three Ghibli animations, for instance.

One may also note that Q1 does not include downloading off the internet, either through legal or illegal channels.

Oh, and although Jack Sparrow defeated Hans and Harry in this poll, Japan Probe recently reported on him surrendering in the face of a bunch of cute kids.
Read the rest of this entry »

You may have heard the news that 25 years ago on the 19th of September 1982, there was the first recorded use of western smileys on usenet. However, that got me wondering as to how old horizontal Japanese emoticons were. With a little investigation, I came across this Japanese page on the evolution of smiley marks in Japan. I’ll now present a summary translation of this history of the Japanese emoticon.

First up is a nuclear scientist claiming to have invented (~_~) and others round about the same time as ASCII Net (a Japanese online service) started in May 1985, although he says he wasn’t the first, he was just following the patterns of others.

Next up was someone claiming that when he attended Hokkaido University the first Japanese emoticon he saw was from Master Koala with (^O^) in fj.jokes, inspiring him to invent the following:

(^.^) – laughing
(;.;) – crying
(-.-) – sleeping, shocked
(_ _) – apologising, lowering one’s head
; – sweat mark, eg (^.^;)
* – red-faced, eg *^.^*

These were coined between May and July of 1988 and used on JUNET, the Japanese University Network.

Now, we get to a usenet post from January 13 1998, indirectly archived by Google Groups (but with broken encoding). In the message we can see the following marks:

(^O^) – Master Koala smiling
(-O-) – Master Koala sleeping
(*O*) – Master Koala shocked
(@O@) – Master Koala looking sideways
(=O=) – Master Koala squinting through narrowed eyes
(>O<) - Master Koala surprised
(dOb) - Master Koala neutral

Now we get a very interesting post, suggesting that the classic (^_^) was invented in Japan, but perhaps not by a Japanese. A Kim Tong Ho claims that in the first half of 1986 he signed posts to ASCII Net with the above-mentioned emoticon, with one example from 20th of June 1986. However, he doesn’t have confidence to claim to be the very first person to come up with a Japanese emoticon that doesn’t require head-tilting to read. Around the same time a person with the handle “binbou” (the nuclear scientist mentioned above) used (~_~), but as to who was first, it is rather difficult to say.

So, there we have it; the Japanese emoticon is at least 21 years and a few months old, perhaps even 22 and a bit years old.

With the analogue switch-off coming ever closer, and with awareness campaigns being conducted on television, newsprint, and even in English on the internet, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by goo Research on the topic of television.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 10th of September 2007 1,079 members of goo Research’s online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52/6% were male, 16.9% were in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.9% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

I’m still not ready for digital broadcasting. My television has the required digital input, but we have no digital tuner. My current thinking is to buy a hard disk-based recorder with built-in tuner, or even take up my cable operator’s deal of a low-rental recorder offered with their digital service.
Read the rest of this entry »

Just a couple of days ago there was a report from Reuters on a forthcoming Daddy exam for Japanese fathers to hone their parenting skills on. Looking around the Japanese web I found many weird and wonderful exams and qualifications, or 検定, kentei as they are called in Japaneseso for your enjoyment and edification I present the top ten strangest qualificatons I came across!

10. Mount Fuji Master

As the Japanese proverb says, “He who climbs Mount Fuji once is a wise man, he who climbs it twice is a fool.” Perhaps there should be an extension to cover those who sit all three levels of the Mount Fuji Kentei? Whether or not any of the questions involve the vending machines at the top of the mountain is unknown.

9. Comic Certification

I suppose it is inevitable that there is a manga-based examination. This one by ebook Japan offers three levels of certification in the way of Japanese comics from beginner to master otaku. If the subject matter is too broad, they offer separate qualifications for specific comic book series from Princess Princess to Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro.
Read the rest of this entry »

One thing one may notice after being around Japanese salarymen is that their tools of the trade, as it were, are much smaller than that of the average American business-person, but they still do pack quite a considerable punch and they are rather proud of the features of their home-grown models. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not the headline and the preceding sentence have anything to do with a recent survey conducted by Yahoo! Japan Value Insight on the subject of notebook (laptop) computers and Japanese businessmen.

Demographics

Between the 3rd and 8th of August 2007 Yahoo! Japan Value Insight gathered the opinions of 16,526 members of their online monitor panel. All were male, and the sample had almost exactly 25% (plus or minus two people) in each of the age bands of twenties, thirties, forties and fifties. 14,037 of the sample, or 84.9%, went on domestic business trips at least once per month. This group was asked Q1. In addition, a smaller group of 2,000 businessmen registered with mpack, the mobile monitor group of Yahoo! Japan Value Insight, who went on business trips at least once a month carrying a notebook computer were asked the more detailed questions Q2 to Q8. This group was made up of 500 people in their twenties, 500 in their thirties, 500 in their forties, and 500 in their fifties. Note that business trip covers both day trips and overnight stays, or even just visiting another branch of the same company in the same city.

There’s a mass of fascinating data in this survey! For instance, Q1 on what people take with them on business trips; old guys prefer carrying a digital camera to a notebook computer; indeed why do almost three in ten take a digitial camera with them?

Although Panasonic loses out badly to Apple in the portable audio player battlefield, here they beat everyone in terms of sales and are only just edged out by the Mac in terms of user satisfaction.

Finally, I must add that I am another satisfied Let’s Note user.
Read the rest of this entry »

According to a recent survey on robots conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com, domestic robots are broadly welcomed, but there is strong reluctance towards letting robots help out with the softer skills.

Demographics

One the 4th of September 2007 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor panel employed in the public and private sectors answered a private internet-based questionnaire. 77.3% of the sample was male, 12.7% in their twenties, 38.7% in their thirties, 33.8% in their forties, 13.9% in their fifties, and 0.9% in their sixties.

A Roomba might be nice around our living room to occassionally scoot around and pick up fluff and crumbs from under the sofa and the table, although I don’t really see it as a substitute for my weekly hoovering, just something that makes my job a bit easier on Sunday mornings. I don’t really see how a clothes washing robot could be effectively made; tasks like hanging out the washing, for instance, are rather intricate, and going around the house picking up dirty clothes is a nice image but impractical given the current state of the art in robotics.
Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s another entertaining find from goo Ranking, this time the top ten actions that women think makes men look manly. The fieldwork was conducted between the 20th and 24th of July 2007, but as usual no further demographic information was available.

Sadly there is no guys rating women equivalent of this survey published yet, but if it appears I’ll be sure to report on it.

I thought that smoking activities were rather high on the list, and does choosing a drink for the ladies really impress them? Quite frankly, most of the answers are characteristics I might expect to see in hosts, not the average guy. Perhaps these results go some way to explain why host bars exist?
Read the rest of this entry »