世論 What Japan Thinks

Having yesterday looked at what the workers think of being asked to do stuff for their boss regarding computers, today japan.internet.com, in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, looked into how bosses asked their underlings for help with computer-related tasks. They interviewed 331 people in management positions in private companies, but the male to female ratio was not specified, although it might have been a depressing figure. 68.3% were in their forties, 28.1% in their fifties, and 3.6% in their sixties.

Note that since this survey was an internet-based one there will be a bias towards more technically-competent bosses, so the figures should show the bosses in a better light than yesterday’s survey did! In addition, one would expect the workers to be more negative about their bosses and the bosses to be more positive about their own skills.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, looked into how workers helped out their bosses with computer-related tasks. There is the promise of them reporting later on how bosses view their subordinates’ use of computers, which I eagerly await! They interviewed 330 people in non-management positions in private companies, 79.1% male. 17.6% were in their twenties, 48.8% in their thirties, and 33.6% in their forties.

Rather than the typical Dilbert image of the Pointy-Haired Boss (hmm, I can’t find that cartoon strip on the internet!), I’ve chosen the Japanese equivalent for the title, the Bar Code-Haired Boss. The boss here refers, I believe, to anyone in management that is above the respondent in the office hierarchy, rather than just the direct boss.

I don’t have much direct contact with management, but do I see a lot of the effects of a lack of skill. My biggest gripe is the inappropriate use of tools; Excel seems the tool of choice for memos, diagramming, etc; and PowerPoint rather than Word for specifications and other technical documentation.
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The Japanese Government’s Statistical Bureau recently released statistics on what I think is the biggest problem that will face Japan in the coming year, namely the decline in the number of births, which coupled with the aging population, is going to put an enormous strain on Japan’s finances in the years to come.

This year too (measured on the first of April) the number of children aged under 15 hit another record low, a 25 year unbroken decline in the birth rate. The headline figures are 17,470,000 children under 15 years old, representing 13.7% of the population, down 0.1 percentage points from last year. There also seems to be an imbalance in the sex distribution, with 105.3 boys for every 100 girls. The reason for this may be worth investigating.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with Cross Marketing, performed a survey regarding Operating Systems for their home PC. They surveyed 150 men and 150 women who own computers at home via an internet-based questionnaire. The age demographics were equally split with 16.6% in their teens (actually only 18 and 19 year olds), twenties, thirties, and so on up to 16.6% in their sixties. It is not stated whether each age band was split equally between male and female.

I’m surprised to see that 12.0% of users are still limping along with one of Microsoft’s 16 bit operating system. Whether the one single Linux user reflects the demographics of Cross Marketing’s monitor pool or whether that is a true reflection of Linux in the Japanese home market, I do not know.

Although my headline says few Japanese may buy an Intel Mac, the 14.3% who responded with varying degrees of positivety represents almost four times as many people as the current Mac OS user base, suggesting that the figures are much more positive than at first glance.
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At the end of April, japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked into the usage of Social Bookmarking Services. They interviewed 1,069 people by means of an internet-based questionnaire. 43.2% of the sample was male, and the age breakdown was 2.6% in their teens, 21.6% in their twenties, 43.1% in their thirties, 24.4% in their forties, and 8.2% in their fifties.

I’ve used del.icio.us myself, but more as an attempted tool of promotion than as some sort of social affair. I get a very small amount of traffic (and in just one or two hits a day) from there and other services like furl and Technorati, although I do have a plan underway to get my own local tagging service up and running, perhaps this weekend.

Note that comparing figures with a survey last month on the state of RSS reader usage, although nearly four times as many people use RSS readers compared to social bookmarking services, round about a third of those interviewed in both surveys expressed a wish to use them in the future.
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infoPLANT recently carried out a survey into how people used their DoCoMo mobile phone’s default screen display. Over a week at the start of April they interviewed 6,358 people, 65.8% of them female, by means of a self-selecting survey from the iMode main menu.

Note that on the newer models of phones, not just a static wallpaper may be used, but also animations or applets may be set to run on the default display. The Japanese word 待ち受け画面, machiuke gamen is used to describe the wallpaper feature that this survey is concerned with. It refers to the display that appears after the phone has been idle for a few seconds, or perhaps when the phone is woken from sleep mode but before going to menu mode.

My own phone usually has seasonal Pinky pictures with calendar overlay.
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MyVoice surveyed their monitor community at the start of April this year to find out what they thought about detox. 15,145 members responded to the internet-based questionnaire; 46% of them were male, and 4% were in their teens, 22% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 11% in their fifties.

The Japanese do seem to love their fad diets and other general health quackery. Germanium sticky pads do seem rather popular these days, replacing the rotating magnet as the most useless product heavily promoted on TV, although these neckbands of titanium are still heavily touted, and I saw an ad at the weekend suggesting that germanium ones are going to be big. I expect the Japan World Cup team to be sporting some of these wastes of cash in Germany next month.
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I’ve installed Spam Karma 2 and Bad Behaviour in the hope of reducing the comment spam – before with just the built-in blacklisting I was having to set all GMail posters to moderated status, for instance, and it was a losing battle tracking the ever-changing splogs. I get about 10 to 20 or so spam comments and trackbacks per day here.

My blog no longer appears on the Google front page when searching for what japan thinks from my home and work PCs at least, although it’s nice to see that I am being correctly syndicated by a couple of news sources, even though nobody asked me before doing it!

Finally, I’m Blog of the Week at Planet Japan Podcast Episode 48, so it seems, but I haven’t had time to listen to it yet! The bit about What Japan Thinks starts at 13 minutes and 34 seconds into the show, so please pay them a visit!

Continuing the recent series of looking at various habits, this time NEPRO JAPAN weighed in with a survey titled “The ease of use of mobile phones”, although the survey looks more at usage habits. They surveyed 4,206 people by means of a public questionnaire available through the iMode, Vodafone live! and EZweb mobile phone sites, for just under a day over the 10th and 11th of April. The self-selecting demographics were 60% female, 3% in their teens, 38% in their twenties, 42% in their thirties, and 17% forty or older. Although this may seem a youth-biased group, the young user is the core demographic they are targetting.

It’s interesting in Q5 that almost half the respondents want to try out a Panasonic phone, versus two in five for Sharp; sales figures suggest that Sharp are the top sellers of phones, but I believe this is because Sharp also sell Vodafone and au-branded phones whereas Panasonic are exclusively DoCoMo.
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Before I start, let me say that all astrology is bunk. However, it is in Japan, like everywhere else, big business with frauds highly-talented (at extracting money from gullible individuals) people like Guinness Book of Records best-selling author in her category, the awful Kazuko Hosoki, or the Feng Shui (pronounced to rhyme with “load of old hooie”) “Dr” Copa who will sell you cheap plastic yellow tat guaranteed to increase his your wealth. Oooh, and don’t get me started on blood types!

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There, I feel better now. infoPLANT recently had an open survey available for one week through an iMode menu on the topic of fortunes. As with all the other infoPLANT surveys, the self-selecting nature of it will bias the sample towards heavy iMode users. Over one week in the middle of March, 6,031 people, 32.9% male, completed the mobile web-based questionnaire. I will use the term “horoscope” in this translation to cover all the various types of fortune-telling that the Japanese word 占い, uranai, covers.
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