Japan could do with more slow lifestyles and slow food, as the impression I get in my working life is that I myself barely get any time to breath, so I don’t know how my colleagues who are in the office far longer than I cope. To find out how the average person felt about their leisure or lack thereof, MyVoice performed a survey about lifestyles.
Demographics
Over the first five days of August 2007 12,308 members of the MyVoice online community successfully completed an online survey. 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.
For the sake of this survey, Slow Life was explained as “even if it is inconvenient, live the natural life for yourself surrounded by nature”; Fast Life was “even if it takes money, live a luxurious and convenient life with all the city benefits in a gadget-rich environment”.
I’d love to see the breakdown of the answers in Q2 by type of employment. I feel I have little room to spare for me alone (although we have enough time as a couple) but I don’t know how my colleagues feel. I suspect (or worry) that they are resigned to week-days being written off, and the image of Japanese salarymen is that at weekends they more often than not do their own thing golfing, fishing, gambling or whatever. Read the rest of this entry »
Perhaps just because I come from more northern stock where skin is paler and more susceptible to not just burning but melanoma and skin cancer, but I feel that over-exposure to the sun is seen more a beauty rather than a health issue here in Japan, and indeed there seems to be a lot of folk wisdom that suggests a child cooked brown is a healthy child. In addition, given the apparent lack of parental care regarding second-hand smoke and child car seats, for instance, I lloked forward to seeing what results came from a recent survey by DIMSDRIVE Research on the topic of ultraviolet protection for children.
Demographics
Between the 20th and 29th of June 2007 DIMSDRIVE Research interviewed 7,121 members of its internet monitor pool by means of a private online questionnaire. 51.8% of the sample was female, 1.0% in their teens, 14.2% in their twenties, 34.0% in their thirties, 29.7% in their forties, 14.6% in their fifties, and 6.5% aged sixty or older. 66.0% were married, and 53.0% had children.
For myself, I wear a hat mostly, and avoid going out for too long in the summertime sun. Thinking about it, in the last few years I’ve actually had sunburn more often when abroad than in Japan, which is perhaps a reflection on Japan being far too hot meaning I have stay in air-conditioned space as much as possible.
I’ve done a bit of web research to find out what is the incidence of skin cancer in Japan, and surprisingly it looks like it is almost neglegible. It doesn’t merit its own separate category in the official cancer statistics of Japan (interestingly, by 2020 prostate cancer will be the second most common cancer in men, yet I’ve never ever seen it mentioned on any popular health program here, and I watch rather a lot of them), and a rather old TIME article suggests that Japanese in Kauai, Hawaii are 88 times more likely than Japanese in Japan to develop skin malignancy. Read the rest of this entry »
Ahh, coffee! I really love a good cup of coffee, but if I drink more than one cup a day the caffeine affects my sleep patterns. I can get away with many cups of tea, though; it’s just coffee’s (and dark chocolate’s, and gyokuro green tea’s) caffeine that does me in. Anyway, MyVoice took a look at the role of coffee in everyday life to see what the average Japanese thinks.
Demographics
Over the first five days of August 2007 12,126 members of the MyVoice online community successfully completed an online survey. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 17% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.
I’ve looked at coffee consumption before, but hopefully this survey sheds some new light on the subject. Note that Q1 describes the most often drunk type, so perhaps those who drink canned coffee on the way to work, for instance, also down instant or filter coffee at the office, thus resulting in the poor showing for canned coffee in the results?
There’s a new advertisement out for Wonda Morning Shot canned coffee out now, so I tried my hand at uploading it to YouTube, so hopefully this works for you all. It features the famous director Akira Kurosawa, mounted samurai hordes, and a rush-hour train.
Last week we learnt that almost all Japanese net users used Google, and indeed almost 50% claimed to use it always, although Gen Kanai did alert me that the figures were most likely dud. To back up his claim, I now present a survey reported on by japan.internet.com, performed by Cross Marketing Inc, on search engine access.
Demographics
Over the 22nd and 23 of August 2007 300 members of the Cross Marketing Inc online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. As usual for Cross Marketing, the sample was evenly split; 50:50 male and female, and 25:25:25:25 from each of the age groups from twenties to fifties.
For myself, I am very rarely unfaithful to Google; whenever the need to access Yahoo! or MSN comes up, I search Google for the engine rather than have any bookmark at the ready. Wifey on the other hand has MSN Japan as her home page and has both Yahoo! and Google toolbars installed. I can’t say I’ve ever seen her use the Yahoo! bar, though, but that’s another matter altogether.
I’m not sure how to interpret the results in Q1SQ1 and Q1SQ2 – why do a larger percentage of Google users have other search engines bookmarked? Is it due to more knowledge of their tools, more power users, or is it that Google does not fully meet Japanese users’ needs? Read the rest of this entry »
With mobile phones becoming an essential item for parents to give their children, and with mobile phone companies advertising child-tracking services, it would be interesting to look at a recent article published by japan.internet.com on the results of a survey conducted by goo Research into children using mobile phones.
Demographics
Between the 16th and 20th of August 2007 1,077 members of goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample was male, 23.6% in their twenties, 22.0% in their thirties, 21.2% in their forties, 20.2% in their fifties, and 13.0% aged sixty or older.
I rather like the current au advertisement for their child-tracking service, so I present it here for your enjoyment.
This is the second in a pair of separate but related surveys; this one being a lighter look at for what reasons do people change jobs by goo Ranking, with the previous by Yahoo! Japan Value Insight being a serious look at the job hunting market. Between the 20th and 24th of July 2007 an unspecified number of people who wanted to change jobs were asked the question.
I don’t really think there are too many differences between the reasons for dissatisfaction in Japan when compared to the West. Read the rest of this entry »
Over two weeks from the 13th to 27th of July 2007 3,387 people chose to complete a public survey offered through the menus of NTT DoCoMo’s iMode mobile phone service. 58.9% of the sample was female, 3.8% in their teens, 29.8% in their twenties, 43.2% in their thirties, 20.4% in their forties, and 2.8% aged fifty or older.
I don’t know if it’s the self-selecting nature of the sample, but there seems to be a rather larger than expected percentage of the population interested in new jobs.
Where I mention “full-time, regular job”, I mean those currently unemployed, whether due to redundancy, re-entering the labour market, or those seeking their first job after leaving education. Read the rest of this entry »
With the megapixel count in mobile phone cameras getting ever higher and the functions available on the phones ever increasing, goo Research, as reported by japan.internet.com, performed a survey to find out about cell phone camera settings.
Demographics
Between the 24th and 27th of August 2007 1,088 members of goo Research’s online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample was male, 16.6% in their teens, 17.8% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.4% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.
I’d love to see more detailed figureson how the awareness and use of the macro mode, or close-up mode corresponds with use of QR Codes. As far as I am aware, many phones have a dedicated normal mode/close-up mode switch, and when one selects QR Code mode, a big message pops up reminding one to switch the camera into the correct mode. I’ve never understood why there has to be a switch for this or why the phone cannot automatically go into close-up mode when reading these barcodes. Perhaps the DoCoMo official specifications explicitly require such a feature, perhaps due to someone having patents they don’t want to licence regarding automation of this feature? Read the rest of this entry »
I think foreign residents in Japan actually seem on average to be better users of chopsticks than the Japanese, although I have absolutely no data to back up that claim, nor a similar claim that most foreigners’ chopstick skills outdo Japanese’s cutlery skills. However, there are a multitude of finer points of etiquette regarding these implements that may not be familiar to many of my readers, nor to me for that matter, so to see what faux pas our hosts may be looking out for, or indeed doing themselves, let’s look at a couple of surveys from goo Ranking on bad chopstick habits people have and bad manners in others that they can’t help noticing. Both surveys were conducted between the 20th and 24th of July 2007.
For me, in Q1 I do 1 rarely, 2 a bit with soba, and 5 sometimes. One manner not noted is rubbing the ends of your sticks together to get rid of splinters, which is apparently an insult to the restaurant or host that you think their chopsticks are cheap and splinter-prone. Read the rest of this entry »
Japan could do with more slow lifestyles and slow food, as the impression I get in my working life is that I myself barely get any time to breath, so I don’t know how my colleagues who are in the office far longer than I cope. To find out how the average person felt about their leisure or lack thereof, MyVoice performed a survey about lifestyles.
Perhaps just because I come from more northern stock where skin is paler and more susceptible to not just burning but melanoma and skin cancer, but I feel that over-exposure to the sun is seen more a beauty rather than a health issue here in Japan, and indeed there seems to be a lot of folk wisdom that suggests a child cooked brown is a healthy child. In addition, given the apparent lack of parental care regarding second-hand smoke and child car seats, for instance, I lloked forward to seeing what results came from a recent survey by DIMSDRIVE Research on the topic of 
Last week we learnt that 
This is the first in a pair of separate but related surveys; this one by Yahoo! Japan Value Insight is a serious look at 
With the megapixel count in mobile phone cameras getting ever higher and the functions available on the phones ever increasing, goo Research, as reported by japan.internet.com, performed a survey to find out about 
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