世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey by goo Research into revealing personal information on the internet where people other than friends can read it. In the middle of October 1,052 of goo’s monitor pool successfully completed a private web-based questionnaire. 56.4% of the sample was female, and 2.5% in their teens, 22.0% in their twenties, 42.7% in their thirties, 23.7% in their forties, and 9.2% in their fifties. Regular readers may remember a previous survey on a similar subject showing that over 90% of bloggers were anonymous.

Although the survey’s main theme is about the online world, the first two questions presented in the summary report actually refer to issues regarding real-world businesses. It seems odd to me that people are twice as wary of giving out their date of birth over the internet than in real life.

Personally, I feel reluctant to revealing my email address in particular, as I’m never sure what spam I’ll end up with, and a lot of Japanese companies, even reputable ones, do not provide simple one-click unsubscribe options.
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Today, japan.internet.com published the results of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into browsers installed on corporate computers. 330 people from their monitor pool employed in private or public enterprises successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 80.0% of the sample was male, 12.4% in their twenties, 42.1% in their thirties, 30.9% in their forties, 13.0% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties.

The figures for Internet Explorer are spectacularly high. Dropping those with no browser or no computer and the don’t knows, almost 98% of users may be running IE, and even including all the don’t knows still leaves at best (or is it at worst?) just under 90% definitely with Internet Explorer. One reason, of course, is that many corporate intranet applications may require a specific browser, as my employer’s does. Note that Sleipnir is just an Internet Explorer shell, although Gen Kanai’s blog informs me that it can be switched to use the Firefox/Gecko engine instead.

For the open source Mozilla project, at best there are 54 identifiable users, or 18.9% of those who know their browser, but that is assuming that the Netscape, Firefox and Mozilla user groups do not overlap, and of course that the Netscape category doesn’t include people using a pre-open source 4.x (or even earlier!) version.
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infoPLANT recently released the results of an opinion poll they conducted into what correspondence courses people were currently taking. They used their usual method to gather respondents, namely a publicly available questionnaire through NTT DoCoMo’s iMode menuing system. Over a week at the end of September and the start of October 4,819 self-selecting people completed the survey successfully. 64.3% of the sample was female. Age breakdowns may be seen later.

For those wanting to better themselves in Japanese, applications for this year’s JLPT, Japanese Language Proficiency Test, have already closed, but there’s still time to apply for next February’s 漢字検定, kanji kentei, the thrice per year kanji level test, which is a fun and useful mode of study.
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At the start of September MyVoice surveyed their internet monitor pool to find out their bicycle usage habits. 13,091 people successfully complete the private opinion poll; 46% were male, 3% in their teens, 21% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 13% aged fifty or older.

It may be interesting to refer to a survey from last year on carrying children on bicycles. Riding is downright dangerous for not just the rider, but pedestrians and cars too, as rules of the road (or pavement) are mostly ignored. The average rider seems to treat ringing the bell or squeeking the brakes as a sign to everyone that says “Get out of the way or I’ll run you over!”

Note that the standard bicycle in Q2 is most often a heavy, single gear machine with front basket and very unsubtle brakes. When I was a kid, the nearest thing was the boring old three-speed Raleigh, which was probably more technically sophisticated than the current Japanese models!
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of research by Cross Marketing Inc into car navigation systems. As usual for Cross Marketing, the demographics of the 320 car drivers that completed the internet-based survey were exactly 50.0% of each sex and 25.0% of each age group from twenties to fifties. One thing not made clear in the results is whether or not the people interviewed drove the car for work or leisure, and whether the car was privately owned or a company car.

Car navigation is a wonderful thing, especially in Japan with its rather quirky way of designating addresses and a bit of a dearth of road signs. One minus point is that given the rate that new roads are built, even just a one year old map data set can be out-of-date. For instance, just about every time I have rented a car and gone any significant distance I’ve ended up on a bit of road not on the car navi’s map. Conversely, last time I drove, thanks to the car navi we found a road through the hill at the back of our house, then another rather fun single-track one round the back of the next hill, saving us getting stuck in a 5 kilometre jam in the process.
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As a sort-of follow-up to one of my more popular recent translations, the emoticons of Japan, let’s have a look at the results of a recent opinion poll reported by japan.internet.com. In the middle of October Cross Marketing Inc interviewed 300 mobile phone mail-using members of its internet monitor pool regarding their use of features like デコメール, deco-mail, available on most of the newer mobile phones that allows the user to send an HTML message with a border or similar template, in-line graphics, selected font colours and sizes, and other decorative features. The demographics of the sample were the usual Cross Marketing equal divisions – half and half male and female, and 20.0% in each of the five age groups from teens to fifties.

Just for the record, KDDI (au and TU-KA) call it デコレーションメール, decoration mail, and SoftBank Mobile’s feature is named アレンジメール, arrange mail. Note that the HTML mail is viewable not just on the models that support its creation, but also on most phones with a built-in browser and even on PCs. Also note that since most people get charged by the packet, there is a considerable expense for both the sender and the receiver.

I’ve not used the feature, so I can’t comment on how good or otherwise it is, but my new phone that I pick up tomorrow does support it, so I’ll have to give it a go.
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It’s been quite a while since I’ve looked at a political opinion poll, so with the recent changes at the top with Junichiro Koizumi being replaced by Shinzo Abe, and with North Korea being a tad unreasonable at the moment, I think this would be a good time to present a translation of a survey of public opinion by the Yomiuri Shimbun on the new cabinet and the recent trip to China and Korea.
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In the middle of September, DIMSDRIVE Research surveyed its monitor pool to find out what they thought regarding the falling birth rate. 7,656 people successfully completed the survey. 42.6% were male, 1.0% in their teens, 16.0% in their twenties, 37.1% in their thirties, 27.8% in their forties, 12.9% in their fifties, and 5.2% aged sixty or older. Sadly there is no information regarding marital status.

I think that the lack of children is the biggest problem facing Japan, and one that needs to be tackled soon before it is too late. While of course Japan is overcrowded and in theory there is nothing wrong with a few less people around, the problem is that the whole population is aging and soon tax from full-time workers will be insufficient to cover pensions.

My own workplace does have decent support for both men and women; both can have up to three years (if I remember correctly) sabbatical for child-raising, and I know of a few women who have taken advantage of this, but as for men, well, for example a colleague’s wife gave birth and he took one whole day off for the day she got out of hospital. “Luckily” the baby was born on a public holiday, but I don’t think he has even decreased his usual working hours (by that I mean four hours overtime a night) since she got out of hospital.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into losing portable electronic equipment. Towards the end of September they interviewed 330 members of their monitor panel by means of a private internet survey. 73.0% were male, 15.2% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 32.1% in their forties, 10.3% in their fifties, and just 0.9% in their sixties.

This survey was probably insired by the recent survey carried out in Europe into losing electronic equipment at airports, which found that a lot of people were willing to just ditch their mobile phone and get a better model through their insurance. With such an insurance scheme being rare in Japan, and with people perhaps more attached to their mobile as a fashion statement rather than as just a tool, if the amount of mascots, stickers and ring tones on even a serious businessman’s phone are anything to go by.
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Having just recently translated surveys on health checks and fitness, let’s visit the other end of the spectrum by looking at a survey from September by MyVoice on fast food. 12,847 members of their internet community completed the private opinion poll; 54% were female, 3% in their teens, 20% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 13% aged fifty or older.

Note that this survey was carried out whilst the importation of US beef was banned, which may very well have adversely affected Yoshinoya’s rating.

My only fast foods are the very occasional Mister Donuts and Subway, each once a year, if even that!
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