世論 What Japan Thinks

[part 1] [part 2]

Following up on the earlier survey on the Baby Boom generation, this time MacroMill interviewed 515 members of their online monitor group who are part of the Baby Boom generation, that is born between 1947 and 1949. All 515 were male, currently working for public or private employers.

It’s interesting to note in Q2 that most people are working because of financial issues, and barely one in fifty feels able to live comfortably off their nest egg.

I’d love to have seen a more direct question to the effect of “Do you want to spend more time with your family?” as the impression one gets of the baby boom generation is that they have a Calvanistic work attitude (although Q2A doesn’t back this up), or at least have spent so long being a company man they don’t know how to be anything else.

In addition, given another recent survey I translated which had a question on the new divorce law regarding pensions (see Q8), perhaps asking how many worried about their wife divorcing for half their pension would have been interesting.
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With PASMO, a system allowing one electronic ticket to be used throughout almost all the public transport lines operated by many different companies, both rail and bus, throughout Tokyo and its environs, being recently introduced on Monday the 18th of March 2007, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc on the Friday and Saturday of the same week as it was launched (ie the 22nd and 23rd of March) into the PASMO service.

Demographics

300 internet users resident in the Tokyo area completed the survey. The group was split 50:50 male and female for each age group, with 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. It is not stated how many were regular train users.

I’m resident in the Kansai area, and although there is a degree of sharing between the ex-public JR lines and the private operators, the main thing missing, which PASMO provides to the capital dwellers, is the ability to carry just one card with all my season tickets gathered together on it. At the moment I have three different ones, and only one is IC-based, as one of the lines I travel on is just introducing its IC commuting ticket, and another has instead of a season ticket a capped pay-as-you-go (actually pay-after-you-go) scheme that offers discounts on frequently-used routes that add up to never being charged more than a standard magnetic-type pass holder. In addition, carrying three active IC chips, plus my work IC chipped ID card, would mean I’d no doubt confuse the ticket gates no end if I accidentally let the wrong card be read.
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Having just translated a look at GPS functionality according to JR Tokai Express Research, along comes another survey by NEPRO JAPAN also on Global Positioning System (GPS) functionality, conducted by means of a public survey made available through the menuing systems of DoCoMo iMode, Yahoo! Keitai, and au EZweb mobile phone portal sites, available over the 8th and 9th of March.

Demographics

3,897 people self-selected themselves; 58% were female, 3% in their teens, 37% in their twenties, 43% in their thirties, and 17% aged 40 or older.

Note than in the previous survey about 21% said they had used mobile phone GPS functionality, but here 30% had. The difference can perhaps be explained by the fact that this age group was younger, self-selecting, and conducted through mobile phones rather than PC internet, therefore this survey would most likely attract a higher percentage of people with newer phones, thus more GPS users.
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Recently, japan.internet.com reported on some research conducted by JR Tokai Express Research regard mobile phones with Global Positioning System (GPS) features. The research was conducted between the 20th and 22nd of March amongst their online monitor community.

Demographics

330 people successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.2% of the sample was male, 22.1% in their twenties, 43.0% in their thirties, 23.6% in their forties, 7.9% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties.

Note that in the current model line-ups, all of the top-end DoCoMo’s (the 903i series) have GPS, as do most of the au models, and according to the SoftBank web site, the following models have GPS: Toshiba’s 911T, 910T, 904T, 813T, 812T, 811T, and 810T and Sharp’s 904SH. Checking a previous survey on the Spring 2007 model line-up, only two of the Toshiba phones above are new models. According to a directive from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, from April of this year all new 3G phone models must have GPS capability built-in, so it seems that SoftBank has quite a lot of work to do.

Also note that the “Anshin Navi” service mentioned in the Q1SQ2 refers to a service by au that allows parents to track their children, or more correctly, their children’s mobile phone. DoCoMo also have a similar service available through their Sanyo SA800i phone.
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As posted about before, Bill over at Rising Sun of Nihon has picked the short straw and has graciously volunteered to host the third Japan Blog Matsuri, this time on the subject of Uniquely Japanese. I think that’s a subject with a lot of potential for collecting together some interesting posts, so either create a new post or dust off your favourite recent post on that subject, and send it in either through the widget below or directly to Rising Sun of Nihon by the end of March, please.
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With the annual new recruit intake for Japanese businesses about to start on April 1st (or April 2nd this year), goo Ranking published a timely survey on what sort of behaviour people would like to warn new recruits about. As usual, the only information regarding the carrying out of the survey is that the fieldwork was done between the 22nd and 24th of February. The scores reported are the relative votes for each option, with the top vote getter at 100 points.

As for me, I think I manage about sixteen or seventeen! How do you do?

Regarding our team’s newest recruit from last year, the only thing personally I’d like to warn him about (apart from to stop constantly sniffing every hour of every day of every week!) is that although our office is casual dress, his trousers are just a bit too saggy and his shirt-tail hangs out around his bum.
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Welcome to a new irregular feature, where I will try to answer queries from my mailbag (and other questions prompted by the buzz of 103bees).

This time, a reader named A.P. emailed to ask what brands of chocolate the Japanese like. Off the top of my head, regarding bar-type just chocolate products, Ghana would appear to be the number one brand name. Thinking about chocolate-based sweets, tops would have to be Pocky of course. For premuim brands, the local brand Royce, USA ones like See’s and Mary’s, and Belgium’s (well, manufactured under licence from Belgium) Godiva. There are also a number of smaller speciality chocolatiers dotted all around the country, whose products can sometimes be found in department store basement food courts.

There was a boom in bitter chocolate last year, but that was mostly spurred on by fakery from Hakkutsu! Aru-Aru Daijiten.
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into the subject of characters, here meaning mainly celebrity or cartoon character items, of the sort you see dangling off every other phone, it seems.

Demographics

Over the 14th and 15 of March 300 internet users responded to their survey. The group was split 50:50 male and female, 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 don’t think I’d go as far as downloading audio samples from cartoons or movies, but I must admit to liking some of the SAN-X stuff, especially Monokuro-boo, and would love to find some low-cost deco-mail clip art – the only site I found was 300 yen per month. For the time being, however, I make do with copying all the Lisa and Gaspard icons from my wife’s mobile! As I think I’ve mentioned before, Frente Spiral’s web site has a lot of nice free Pinky-Monkey wallpaper and icons for your mobile.
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Just recently japan.internet.com published the result of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into foreign-affiliated companies. As finance is one field I know little about, please let me know if I get some of the terminology wrong!

Demographics

On the 14th of March 331 people from JR Tokai Express Research’s monitor group employed in private industry successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 77.9% of the sample was male, 16.6% in their twenties, 43.8% in their thirties, 31.1% in their forties, 7.3% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their sixties.

This topic has, I think, been in the news recently, but I can’t find anything about it. The nearest bit of English news I’ve discovered is this piece from Japan Economy News on a foreign-led shareholder revolt.
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Following on from Sunday’s survey on people’s hopes and ambitions for ten years hence, this time goo Ranking looked at what expectations people had for society at large in ten years time. As usual, no demographics, bar the fact that the survey was conducted between the 22nd and 24th of February.

This set of results has the cure for cancer that I was disappointed not to see in the previous survey, but I suppose it could be classed more as a discovery than as an invention? I note, however, that resolution of North Korean issues, be it kidnapping or just general problems stemming from having a loony at the helm, does not feature in the list. I wonder if people expect it to be resolved much quicker than the 10 years asked about here?
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