世論 What Japan Thinks

The big news in Japan right now is, of course, the birth of a potential future Emperor. This story will spawn a million conspiracy theories, no doubt, from was it a natural conception, to, well, I don’t know how far these wild tales will go! The exclusively male lineage of the Japanese royal family is also causing the Western press to have a look at the role of women in Japanese society as a whole, so as a service to my newer readers, or those discovering the blog through search engines, I’d like to point out I have translated a number of surveys on gender issues, covering many aspects of society from women in the workplace to domestic violence.

This rather buzzword-overloaded title refers to the results of a survey at the start of this month by goo Research, published by japan.internet.com, on spreading memes, or baton touching, to use the Japanese-English terminology; baton is the meme, touching is the spreading of it. 1,092 members of their monitor pool successfully completed an internet-based private poll; 56.8% of the sample was female, 2.4% in their teens, 21.9% in their twenties, 46.3% in their thirties, and 29.4% in their forties,

Here the meme is the creation and spreading of a set of questions through the blogosphere (uggh, buzzword overload!); you get tagged by someone, answer a set of questions on a theme in a post to your blog, ending by selecting five more victims to take their turn in answering, as in this, the first English example I could find through Google, or this, a Japanese blog dedicated to passing the baton. “Baton touch” is, as indicated, yet another Japanese-English phrase, just in case you are confused by it, where we would probably use “baton pass” instead in English. Apparently if you pop onto mixi and search for バトン, baton, you can find no end of them to join in with.

Note that apparently this baton passing is also being used for PR campaigns, and for CGM, Consumer Generated Media, but as to what form this takes, I am yet to learn.
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Just a bit of site news to tell you that I’ve got the new Blogads code up and running, so space can be purchased on my blog at quite reasonable rates, starting from US$15 for 500 characters for three months. (Correct as of posting date, and all advert prices are subject to change without any notice, and all adverts subject to approval or rejection)

I believe there is someone who has bought Google AdWords to run on this site, based on the fact that I have a non-zero (but still negligible) advert CPM (per thousand page views). Purchasing Blogads will get your ad on every page of the blog for a guaranteed length of time at a fixed cost, with no extra costs for click-throughs, etc. Three months will get you around 50,000 page views (given current traffic rates, client-side ad blocking software permitting), working out at about 30 cents CPM. Direct purchasing from Blogads also helps me out as I get 70% of the fees rather than relying on the vagaries of Google to determine how much I might or might not receive.

Thank you all for your continued patronage! We now returned to our scheduled blogging.

japan.internet.com today published the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research into podcasting. They interviewed 331 people from their monitor pool, 87.6% male, employed in private or public enterprises. 7.3% were in their twenties, 39.9% in their thirties, 36.3% in their forties, 13.9% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties.

I would be in the ex-users category, myself; even though this blog has been featured on three podcasts, the latest of them being Japundit’s podcast, Japan Talk, I have to admit I’ve not listened to the last two, and I in fact ditched my Sony hard disk player recently, but Panasonic’s recent announcement of their SD800N digital audio player with noise-cancelling headphones I could perhaps be persuaded to try again.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey by Cross Marketing Inc into how people check the time. They interviewed 300 mobile phone users from their internet monitor group at the end of August, 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.

You may remember a previous survey about two months ago where it was reported that about 40% of Japanese use their mobile phones as their main alarm clock. I also rarely wear a wristwatch, prefering to peek at my mobile for the time checks. It’s not quite as convenient as a watch, but a watch just gets in the way when I’m typing, I feel.
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As another part of their 91st Ranking Research, DIMSDRIVE Research looked at what people thought was the cause of their bad eyesight. We’ve seen previously how most Japanese wear glasses, so let’s have a look at why they do. No, that reason was not included in the answers! They interviewed 4,347 people (perhaps all thought their eyesight was bad) from their internet monitor group over a period of a week in the middle of August.

The main reason my eyes are wonky, I suspect, is as a child I spent a lot of time staring at the sun.
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japan.internet.com published the results of goo Research’s 27th regular monthly survey into mobile phone upgrade needs. Over four days towards the end of August 1,000 mobile phone owners from their monitor group successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 55.3% of the group was female, 2.3% in their teens, 20.7% in their twenties, 42.0% in their thirties, 23.3% in their forties, and 11.7% aged fifty or more. I believe people were asked about their own personal phone rather than company equipment.

The almost zero interest in foreign phones (if we discount Sony-Ericsson) is both quite surprising and rather predictable to me. The design aesthetic of Western phones is quite different to the Japanese; fat stubby bricks versus thin rounded clamshells, to attempt to sum up the differences in a single phrase. Samsung is Korean, however, as might Pantech be (I’ve never heard of them before!), but I wonder if their non-existent sales is related more to poor model appeal rather than to nationalistic sympathies. Japanese phones do really poorly overseas (discounting Sony-Ericsson again) so perhaps the reasons are similar for both imports and exports?
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As part of DIMSDRIVE Research’s 91st Ranking Research, they published the result of a survey into which inventor to thank for the world today. They surveyed 6,008 people from their monitor pool over six days in mid-August. It might be interesting to cross-reference this post with a previous ranking survey on the top company founders or presidents.
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

The answer to headline is “not very much, quite frankly. And just 17 times a year.”

The Japanese division of the drug company Bayer recently published the results of a survey into Japanese married couples’ bedroom life. They interviewed 103 men and 103 women, all currently married, from each decade of life from their thirties to their sixties, excepting men in their forties, where they only had 102 people, making 823 people in total. The fieldwork was conducted between the 9th and 12th of June this year, by means of an internet questionnaire. No information is available on how the respondents were chosen.

Surprisingly, I feel, almost a third in some degree of a sexless marriage felt that sex was just too much of pain in the bum (figuratively, not literally!), much higher than the percentage who thought love had faded on either or both sides of the relationship.

Note also in Q12 and Q13 the difference between how people with experience of ED reacted versus the good intentions of those who had not.
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

The answer to headline is “not very much, quite frankly. And just 17 times a year.”

The Japanese division of the drug company Bayer recently published the results of a survey into Japanese married couples’ bedroom life. They interviewed 103 men and 103 women, all currently married, from each decade of life from their thirties to their sixties, excepting men in their forties, where they only had 102 people, making 823 people in total. The fieldwork was conducted between the 9th and 12th of June this year, by means of an internet questionnaire. No information is available on how the respondents were chosen.

In the second part we look at the degree of satisfaction in marriages; total sexlessness seems to be bad for a relationship, but even those with a somewhat sexless marriage seem to be reasonably satisfied overall. As one might expect, those most active in the bedroom seem to be the happiest.

Unfortunately, in Q8 the print on the graph is far too small and I cannot read it all; if anyone can help out, please leave me a short message.
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