世論 What Japan Thinks

As part of their 113th Ranking Research, DIMSDRIVE Research asked their online panel what Japanese movies would they recommend to foreigners.

Demographics

5,537 members of their monitor panel successfully completed the questionnaire. 55.0% of the sample was female.

“It’s Hard Being a Man” (Otoko ha Tsurai yo) series seems a rather strange choice, as from what I can gather the plots (or is it plot singular?) are based around such Japanese values that they would be rather difficult to translate, and even with a good translation the cultural cues would be lost on the average viewer. I suspect it might be like recommending the Carry On series to the Japanese as a means of understanding the UK!
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Over the first five days at the start of March MyVoice surveyed their internet community on the topic of personal computers. Note that I will use the term PC throughout, but the survey includes Macs and other kinds of home computers too.

Demographics

15,786 people successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 15% in their fifties.

As a side-note, I’ve often wondered by MyVoice has no-one over fifty-nine in their samples. Do they have to leave the online community once they reach that age? Do they really mean in their fifties or older in the group? Perhaps I should email them.

Back on PCs, I have a home-built effort, so if I define buying a new one as upgrading the motherboard, I think it was last changed in the year 2000. Marriage does tend to realign your purchasing priorities, or more precisely one gets one’s purchasing priorities realigned for one. I’m still blogging away on a 900 MHz AMD Athlon, and whilst I’d love to buy a dockable portable, or just anything with a quieter fan, sadly my budget is assigned to other things.
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With the recent negative news breaking regarding TOTO toilets going up in smoke, let’s look at the more positive side of Japanese toilets through a survey published by goo Rankings on what function or service people are most happy to find in public restrooms. The survey was conducted between the 22nd and 24th of February 2007, but no more demographic information is available, although looking at the results it is perhaps a mainly female audience who completed the survey. Note that the score column has 100 points for the top vote getter, and for the other entries the score is the percentage of the top’s vote total that that entry received.

The first time I experienced the top ranking warm toilet seat it was a strangely disconcerting feeling, as to that point warmth was associated with someone else having recently used said loo, but now I love the feature, and my toilet at home also has a cloth cover for even more soothing comfort on the chilly nights.

Number four, also known in Japanese by the brand name “Oto Hime”, or “Sound Princess“, plays a wee tune to cover up the plops and splashes as one does one’s business. I saw my first only two weekends ago in a small cafè; I really wanted to press the button, but we were the only customers and the owner is a friend of my wife’s family, so I just couldn’t.
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Over the first five days at the start of March MyVoice surveyed their internet community on the topic of water purifiers and filters.

Demographics

15,793 people successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 20% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

Although Japan is rich in natural water resources, as is the case in many other urbanised countries, after passing through much pipework (although no humans, I don’t think) and much processing the city tap water has rather a distinct flavour. In addition, there is the (usually unfounded) worry about bacteria and the like in the public water system, thus many people choose to use water purifying systems.

I’m not sure how to read the answers for Q4. For example, one in five doesn’t use tap water in the bath – I presume this must mean they don’t use cold water, as in the Japanese language hot water is distinct from cold, and perhaps there are some mysterious properties of heating to 50°C that makes it acceptable for use in the tub.
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I’m just wondering if any of my readers are heading to the RSA Conference Tokyo 2007 on the 25th and 26th of April in the Prince Park Tower Tokyo? I’m heading up on the 25th for the meeting, so I’m curious if any of my readers might be heading there too. Drop me a mail if you are. Note that the exhibition is free if you download the application from the web site, so if you’re an impoverished student or English teacher (or software engineer…) you may wish to pop along and pick up some of the freebies that hopefully may be on offer.

This month’s volunteer host is Deas at Rocking in Hakata. To fit in with the season, this month’s topic is tourism. As usual, there is a lot of scope to be creative with this one, so we are awaiting your entries.

Also note that since we are coming up to Golden Week, entries will be accepted until the 7th of May, so you have may time to post all about your coming Golden Week fun!
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Between the first and fifth of March this year, yet another survey that MyVoice conducted was into the matter of water-resistant mobile phones.

Demographics

15,771 members of their online community successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifites.

I must say this is perhaps the oddest mobile phone topic I’ve translated! The only waterproof mobiles I know are the rather chunky and masculine G-Shock watch-inspired G’zOne Casio mobile phones, although I don’t know what the situation is regarding just splash resistance in other handsets. I’ve never given mobile phone waterproofing any thought, myself, and quite frankly I worry about those people who seem to want to read ebooks on their mobiles in the bath, and I hope there is no intersection between the group wanting to use in the bath and those wanting to take photos!
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Between the first and fifth of March this year, yet another survey that MyVoice conducted was into the matter of elementary and middle-school education, covering children between the ages of six and fifteen.

Demographics

15,765 members of their online community successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 3% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 14% in their fifites.

Looking back on my school days, I cannot really say there was much wrong with the, alhough I did grow up in a small town where there were not many social problems. In the present day, however, I could rattle off a million and one things that may be wrong in both my home country and Japan. However, bemoaning the behaviour of the younger generation has been a universal trait since the days of Socrates.

I am surprised that Q4 and Q5 did not have more options about perceived failures of parents to teach their children how to behave, which I feel (as a non-parent) is an important issue in the degradation of the education system. Disturbances in class is just a symptom, not the root cause.

How do English language teachers or those with children in Japanese schools find Japanese schools? How would you rate the problems?
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into automatic software updating of personal computer operating systems, in particular Windows.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 5th of April 300 members of their online monitor group living in Tokyo and the surrounding area successfully completed a private internet-based survey. As is usual for Cross Marketing, there was an equal split of the sexes 50:50, and of the age bands, with 20.0% in each of the teens, twenties, thirties, forties and fifties age groups.

I do share most of the people’s concern that the reboot dialog is annoying, as once it is there it will keep popping up every five minutes. It really needs a “Please stop reminding me!” check box. My other pet hate is that the background process does slow down my machine a bit when it runs.
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goo Rankings recently published the results of statistics gathered from searches of their ecology portal site on the top environmental search keywords for March 2007.

For educational purposes, I’ll report both the Japanese term and the English translation.
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