世論 What Japan Thinks

[part 1] [part 2]

Over a week at the end of August and the start of September, DIMSDRIVE Research looked at movie theatre attendance. 5,180 member of their online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet survey. 43.1% were male, 1.2% in their teens, 17.2% in their twenties, 34.8% in their thirties, 26.9% in their forties, 14.2% in their fifties, and 5.7% aged sixty or over.

I found the infrequency of cinema visits in Q1 rather surprising, with over two in five visiting once every sixth months or less and another one in five not having visited at all in recent years, but sadly there is no follow-up questions to find out why they don’t visit more often. Given that in Q4 46.0% use Ladies’ Day discounts (usually 1,000 yen instead of the standard 1,800 yen price), and since there were 56.9% female respondents, that means that just over four in five women use these discount. Since about half often buy popcorn and a drink, both of which have high markups, perhaps more Men’s Days or better still Couples Days would get more bums on seats and better profits. However, Q4SQ suggests that guaranteeing a seat ahead of time is a key requirement, but one usually cannot reserve seats at Ladies’ Day prices, so perhaps allowing reservations on these days is a way forward. However, if people turn up at the cinema and find no seats leftfor their favourite film, they may often choose another one since they’ve come all the way to the cinema, so if seat availability could be checked from home they’d actually have less custom.
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NEPRO Japan recently conducted a survey into people’s views on children carrying mobile phones. Over one day at the start of October they gathered 3,716 valid responses by means of a self-selecting public survey available through the menuing system of all three major mobile phone carriers, namely DoCoMo’s iMode, au’s EZweb, and Softbank’s Yahoo! Keitai. Demographically, the respondents were 59% female, 2% in their teens, 36% in their twenties, 44% in their thirties, and 18% aged forty or older.

Q4 is an interesting question. As far as I know, in the UK there are a lot of rules regarding the provision of facilities for the blocking of content that mobile phones can access, but I have never heard of such a facility in Japan. The worry about running up big bills is a bit unnecessary, however, as all mobile providers have plans that can cap usage at specific costs. Going shopping online seems another strange worry, but perhaps it also means signing up for too many services with monthly fees?
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With MNP, Mobile Number Portability, having just started in Japan, japan.internet.com reported that JR Tokai Express Research performed a survey into people’s views on MNP. They interviewed just 330 people from their internet monitor group by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 66.3% of the sample was male, 33.3% female, so where that places the remaining one person, I don’t know! 17.3% were in their twenties, 41.8% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 11.8% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.

The sample size for Q1SQ is very small, so it is difficult to extrapolate these figures, but it does seem that DoCoMo is the biggest loser and au the biggest winner. This backs up unofficial figures I heard of about 400,000 net loss to DoCoMo, 600,000 gain for au, and 200,000 less customers at Softbank, despite their suicidal price slashing. UPDATE: I was out by a factor of ten or so! This morning’s TV (recalling from memory, so the figures might not be 100% accurate!) said that au gained a net 103,000 customers, DoCoMo lost 75,000, and Softbank 23,000 over the last week. The figures don’t add up because there are also brand new customers included in the overall totals, I believe, and each company perhaps uses different counting methods.

For me, I had enough problem working out how to use my new phone from the same maker and service provider, so I’d be put off taking advantage of MNP and having to learn a whole new service model too!
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Last month japan.internet.com reported on the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research into mail client software. They interviewed 330 people from their monitor pool employed in public or private enterprises. 80.6% of the sample was male, 9.4% in their twenties, 45.8% in their thirties, 34.2% in their forties, 9.4% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their sixties.

Not suprisingly, Microsoft rules the roost here, as it does with browsers too. I’m a Becky! user myself at both home and at work; Becky! is, in fact, the recommended work mailer as the Outlook family is prone to be a vector for viruses.
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted over three days from the 25th to 27th of October, just after MNP, mobile number portability, was introduced, by Cross Marketing Inc into mobile phone bills. They interviewed 300 mobile phone users from their monitor group by means of a private internet opinion poll. The ratio of male to female was exactly 50:50, and exactly a fifth in each of the age bands from teens to ages 50 to 59.

In Q2 I wonder how to interpret the figure for those on data plan discounts. For the talk plan discounts one example given was the Softbank Love Teigaku (fixed price), where for 300 yen per month you can have unlimited voice calls to one other user, so I don’t know if for data plans it was people on unlimited use data packets rather than, for example, DoCoMo’s packet back scheme, which gives you a number of free packets then all extra packets at fractions of the standard price, from one-third to one-twentieth of the normal cost, if I remember correctly.
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japan.internet.com reported on an opinion poll conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the use of dictionaries. 331 members of their internet monitor pool successfully completed the survey, with 61.3% of the group male, 16.9% in their twenties, 41.7% in their thirties, 28.1% in their forties, 9.7% in their fifties, and 3.6% in their sixties.

It may be useful to reference a previously-translated survey on electronic dictionaries. I’m surprised that ALC didn’t make it into the list as it seems rather a popular destination for the people in my office, for instance.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey by goo Research into web site navigation issues. At the end of October they interviewed 1,093 members of their montior group with five or more years of internet experience by means of a private internet-based survey. 50.05% were male (interestingly, lower than the usual goo monitor ratio of closer to 60%), with 19.0% in their twenties, 44.2% in their thirties, 26.4% in their forties, and 10.4% in their fifties.

Regarding scrolling left and right, I recently got a new mouse with a scroll wheel that goes left and right as well as up and down. However, I can’t say I’ve actually ever remembered to use the left-right feature, and in fact it causes more trouble than it’s worth as a wheel-click in my Opera browser opens a link in a new window, but it’s too easy to accidentally push the wheel to the right at the same time, causing Opera not to recognise my click.
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MyVoice conducted a number of surveys of their internet community at the start of October, and one of these was on the subject of delivery food. 12,313 members successfully completed the questionnaire, with 54% of the respondents female, 2% in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 41% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

One surprising omission from Q2 is that great Kansai staple, okonomiyaki. When I used to regularly visit one shop (now sadly closed down), they’d always be two or three orders for delivery processed whilst I was eating.

Talking of okonomiyaki, I was watching some English language educational program on NHK a few months ago, and in their random foreigner talking on the topic of the lesson segment, they had a guy walking to work in Tokyo, telling us how he passed down a street with restaurants selling local Edo delicacies like the aforementioned okonomiyaki. NHK must have deliberately left that in to entertain the locals by laughing at the ignorant foreigner.
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japan.internet.com reported that in the middle of October JR Tokai Express Research interviewed 330 people from its monitor panel on the matter of usage of bulletin board sites. Of the sample, 74.8% were male, 14.8% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 30.3% in their forties, 12.1% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties. Note that one of the features of JR Tokai’s monitor pool is that they have a large percentage of business men, due in part to the fact that completing these surveys awards points for discounts on the Bullet Train.

2 Channel is a cess pit, quite frankly. I’ve visited there a few times myself, but the combination of heavy slang, both ordinary slang and 2-chan specifics, the general level of vitreol that anonymity promotes, and the utter ugliness of the layout makes me soon give up in disgust.
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With number portability just starting out, and with Softbank’s computer system melting down from the overload of new customers thanks to their, in my opinion, suicidal new pricing scheme (although the small print needs to be carefully read) it may be interesting to look at a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research over four days from the 20th to 23rd of October, just before the new system was introduced, into what mobile phones from each of the three main providers people desire. They interviewed 330 people from their internet monitor group, 67.3% male, 15.5% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 32.1% in their forties, 9.7% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties.

Even although Softbank offer to honour all transferring customers’ loyalty discounts (we get about 30% to 40% off for ours), I do have a dislike of Yahoo!, and I don’t think these special offers will last that long.
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