世論 What Japan Thinks

As part of their 113th Ranking Research, DIMSDRIVE Research looked at what people’s little luxuries were.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 22nd of March 5,537 members of their online community successfully completed a private internet-based survey. 45.0% of the sample was male.

It’s interesting to note that seven out of the ten directly involve eating, and one could argue that taking a trip to an onsen is as much for the food as the bath. By the way, I don’t know why “eating out” and “eating at a restaurant” are listed separately, although I suspect if they grouped together all the eating options there might not be many other answers left!
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of research conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the use of melody calls. This is the service (and a trademark of NTT DoCoMo) whereby when someone calls a phone, instead of getting a standard tone, instead music selected by the phone owner gets played, a sort of reverse ringtone for the caller instead of the callee.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 9th of April 2007 330 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s monitor group answered a private internet-based questionnaire. 47.3% of the sample was male, 21.8% in their twenties, 38.5% in their thirties, 20.3% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 5.2% in their sixties.

Currently only NTT DoCoMo and au by KDDI support this feature. The DoCoMo feature is named “Melody Call”, and au’s translates as “EZ Waiting Music”. SoftBank does not offer such a service. In March DoCoMo reported they attained over 10 million subscribers to the service, whereas au reported 1 million contracts. However, DoCoMo offers a feature package of Melody Call plus answer phone, call waiting and call forwarding for a price only 100 yen more expensive than the standard answer phone service, so perhaps their extremely high figures can be attributed to people buying the package and getting the Melody Call bundled rather than suggesting a huge desire for the feature alone. Indeed, with only 13.6% of users in this survey reporting that they are currently using the service I suspect there is a significant percentage of people who are not actually aware or have forgotton that they signed up to it.

I’ve personally never heard a melody call ring tone, but that’s probably because I don’t make many outgoing calls.
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Excuse the rather clumsy headline, but Macromill recently interviewed 309 members of their internet research monitor group who currently worked as either private or public employees and expressed a wish to enter or re-enter further education as mature students.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 5th of April 2007 309 people completed a private online questionnaire; 66.0% were male, 35.6% in their twenties, 42.1% in their thirties, 18.8% in their forties, and 3.6% in their fifties. All of them were considering entering a Japanese university as an under-graduate or post-graduate within the next five years.

In addition, 13.9% were married with no children, 27.8% married with children, 52.8% were single with no children, 0.6% were single, with children, but didn’t need to support them, and 1.3% were married with children that didn’t need to be supported. Regarding education levels, 11.0% had post-graduate qualifications, 57.6% had graduated from university, 14.2% attended college, 16.2% attended up to high school, 0.3% to middle school, and 0.6% didn’t answer.

Sadly, this survey does not highlight those wishing to do MBAs. Additionally, a number of UK and USA universities offering distance learning MBA courses in conjuction with Japanese institutions, but whether or not these would be counted as Japanese courses for the sake of this survey is not clear.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on goo Research’s sixth regular Social Networking Service (SNS) sruvey.

Demographics

Between the 9th and 11th of April 2007 1,086 members of goo’s online monitor group completed a questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample were male, 17.4% in their teens, 19.9% in their twenties, 17.9% in their thirties, 17.5% in their forties, 16.5% in their fifties, and 10.9% in their sixties.

I supose satisfaction levels are a given, as people wouldn’t tend to use SNSs if they weren’t enjoying them, although it does seem that 3% are soldiering on regardless.
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Watching television last night, one quiz program featured a question about someone who kept a garden specialising in one single genus. One member of the genus is called 姑のざぶとん, shutome no zabuton, mother-in-law cushion, so what is the genus. I laughed out loud at such an obvious and easy question and at the image of this cushion, but my Japanese wife looked blank, and even after explaining the answer to her she just didn’t get it. Back in the studio, just one out of the six celebrities on the panel got the right answer, the sweet and innocent 乙葉, Otoha, but she had to suffer the disapproval of the other guests, and apologised to the question-master and the audience at home for casting such aspersions on mother-in-laws everywhere.

I thought the mother-in-law as the butt of jokes was a universal theme. Is this just a British thing, or do my readers from other countries also find the name “mother-in-law cushion” hilarious?

japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the matter of the use of open source software in the public sector.

Demographics

On the 9th of April 2007, 332 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. All of the respondents worked in the public sector. 82.5% were male, 7.5% in their twenties, 38.3% in their thirties, 42.2% in their forties, 9.6% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

A number of years ago an initiative to promot the use of Linux within local goverment and other public sector locations was started, with many local authorities and the IPA, Information-technology Promotion Agency, carrying out open source software trials, but this survey suggests that the penetration at the client side has been minimal.

Note that a previous survey covering both the private and public sectors also found there was an overwhelming majority of Windows users.
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into mobile phone body types. Previous surveys have indicated the Japanese love for both clamshell designs and skinny models.

Demographics

Over the 11th and 12th of April 2007 300 members of Cross Marketing’s online monitor pool successfully completed a private internet-based survey. All the respondents were mobile phone users living in Tokyo and the surrounding area. As usual for Cross Marketing, there was a 50:50 male and female split, 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.

I was surprised to see only one person say they had a Sharp’s AQUOS Keitai. This is the best selling phone design, featuring a quite stunning hinge that they call the Cycloid, it seems. The phone opens like a clamshell, but then the screen can be rotated 90 degrees around a central pivot to allow the user to watch One Seg television in landscape mode.
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It’s the weekend, so what nicer than joining the Japanese in one of their favourite pastimes, going for a drive. Before one can go for a drive, one needs a car of course, so why not rent one? But, what points are important when renting a car? goo Rankings tried to find out in this ranking survey conducted between the 20th and 22nd of March 2007.

I rent a car once every few months or so, and I always select Toyota Rentacar, as they are convenient, have car navigation systems as standard, and I especially like renting the Prius as although it might be a bit more expensive, the low fuel costs make up for it, and I do like driving it. A non-smoking car is a given, naturally, and only recently did Toyota introduce booking a specific model as non-smoking, hopefully due to complaints from customers like me.

Just in case you want to rent but your Japanese is not up to it, Hertz use Toyota as their agent in Japan, so you can call them instead to do your booking.
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With the Japanese version of the SOX, or Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which provides a framework for corporate governance, due to be introduced on the first of April 2008, japan.internet.com, in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, looked at J-SOX and compliance issues surrounding the law. Their full report, which may be purchased through this link (Japanese only), goes into much more detail on the subject. This article just touches awareness issues.

Demographics

On the 10th of April 2007 330 people from JR Tokai Express Research’s monitor panel and employed in public listed companies completed a private online questionnaire. 80.0% of the sample was male, 13.3% in their twenties, 52.4% in their thirties, 27.9% in their forties, 5.2% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their sixties.

I have only heard about J-SOX compliance from work in respect to password policy for our intranet, and perhaps interestingly enough, searching my employer’s Japanese web site turns up about 26 hits for SOX (once I eliminate pages on NOx and SOx pollutants), but our US web site has just seven hits.

The Japanese term is SOX 法, SOX hou, merely SOX law in English. However, a frequently-heard complaint from the poll-takers was that SOX law or J-SOX does not really mean anything (confusion with Dice-K at the Boston Red Sox, perhaps!) so they wish there was a more Japanese name for it.
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DIMSDRIVE Research recently conducted a poll on the subject of check-out shopping bags, the plastic bags most supermarkets give away free to shoppers. However, some chains have introduced charges for bags, most of the others encourage people to bring their own, and there is talk of introducing legislation to force all shops to charge for bags.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 15th of March, 2007 7,504 members of DIMSDRIVE’s online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.4% of the sample was female, just 0.3% were in their teens, 16.6% in their twenties, 36.9% in their thirties, 27.9% in their forties, 13.7% in their fifties, and 4.6% aged sixty or older. 65.2% were married; 42.5% worked full-time in the private or public sectors, 24.2% were homemakers, 12.8% were part-timers, 9.2% were self-employed, 5.7% were unemployed (including retirees), 2.9% were students and 2.7% had other employment statuses.

Note that as well as taking your own bag with you, some supermarkets offer baskets for sale. In addition, if you refuse bags, supermarkets often offer points that may be collected and exchanged for gifts.

Last time I was in Austria shopping at a Spar in Vienna, they only had pay-for bags, costing, if I remember correctly, a not insignificant number of Euro cents (60 or so?), but this was for a large and substantial bag, which I think is a far better idea than charging for the current bags which are difficult to reuse for anything other than collecting household garbage, and I think people may be more understanding about paying for something valuable and definitely reuseable.

I’m also glad to see Q1, the frequency of visiting supermarkets, a figure I’ve been interested in finding out for a while!

UPDATE: I see that in the UK, Sainbury’s have launched an “I’m not a plastic bag” bag that seems to have caused quite a stir! Would a similar campaign work here, I wonder, although reading the article I don’t know if they are actually going to be used by the general public, or just kept as keepsakes or investments.
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