世論 What Japan Thinks

I’m sure you’ve felt that the site hasn’t been updated with its usual frequency the last week, but I have a genuine excuse. As well as just enjoying the holiday break, I’ve actually recently been prescribed Paxil and Wypax, which seems to be a Japanese formulation of Lorazepam, with a bonus dose of Gasmotin. The first two drugs seem like scary beasties, but I’m on just about the lowest dose for each, so touch wood…
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At the end of April, japan.internet.com, in conjuction with goo Research, published the results of a survey into how much people trust various internet sources. This survey comes hot on the heels of an astonishing (to me) poll that discovered well over 90% of Wikipedia users trusted the contents to some degree. Here they interviewed 1,012 members of the goo Research monitor group via a private internet poll. The demographics were 57.6% female, 3.3% were teenagers, 24.7% were in their twenties, 40.4% were in their thirties, 24.0% in their forties, and 7.6% in their fifties.

I am suprised at just two in five saying that they have encountered false data on the internet! I also find it surprising that a relatively high number trust shopping sites over Q&A sites; my gut reaction would be the other way round, especially as the Q&A sites that I am aware of seem to have an active community that corrects any errors before they get propagated. In addition, considering the popularity of auction sites, under 5% trusting them seems to run counter to expectations.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with goo Research, recently investigated the use of Social Networking Services, or SNS, in Japan. 1,087 members of the goo Research Monitors took part in the internet-based survey. 56.3% of the sample was female; 2.4% were in their teens, 22.9% in their twenties, 39.9% in their thirties, 24.8% in their forties, and 10.0% in their fifties. It may be instructive to compare the results here with those from an earlier survey of SNS that I translated in December.

総務省, soumushou, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, recently released figures that stated there were 7.16 million registered users of SNS (I’m not sure if people registered for two services are counted twice) at the end of March 2006; in the six months from September of 2005 the number of has increased by almost 80%! As well as users increasing, so are the services; in February Yahoo! opened up the beta version of Yahoo 360° and in March Rakuten introduced Rakuten Plaza Links.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, looked at the use of affiliate schemes by bloggers and web page maintainers. They surveyed 330 people employed in public or private businesses; 86.1% of the sample was male, 10.6% were in their twenties, 33.3% in their thirties, 38.2% in their forties, 15.2% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties. Note that perhaps people who are ranking in vast sums of money from blogging wouldn’t be wasting their time filling in surveys for the chance of a few yen off a Green Car seat!

The survey did not mention how “affiliate” was defined; obviously sponsored links like with Amazon Associates would fall under this category, but as to whether AdSense (click that button on the left to find out more!) is also included, this survey does not clarify. Just for the sake of disclosure, at the rate I’m going at, my target for the year is in the 5,000 to 10,000 yen range (yes, just one hundred bucks!) although I had a bumper month last month where I managed to raise more than my hosting fee!
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with Cross Marketing, recently investigated mobile phone privacy. They sampled 150 men and 150 women, 16.6% aged 18 or 19, 16.6% in their twenties, and so on up to 16.6% in their sixties.

Note that over three times as many people take their mobiles into public toilets than into their toilet at home. I wonder what is hidden behind that statistic! Im also rather surprised to see that less than a third of all user employ any security locks on their phone; note almost all phones have lock features what require a four digit code to open them. Some of the more advanced phones go as far as having a fingerprint reader that may be used to unlock the device.
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My Voice recently performed a survey to see that the members of their internet community thought about airlines and their image. They interviewed 15,121 people via a private internet-based questionnaire. The group was 46% male, with 3% teenagers, 22% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

Perhaps slightly suprisingly the local carriers come out on top, despite both ANA and JAL reporting high-profile problems with some of their fleet. I like Lufthansa myself, and Northwest’s food is awful and the staff scary soccer moms!
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Recently, japan.internet.com, in conjuction with goo Research, published the results of a study into the use of web site analysis tools. They interviewed by means of an internet-based questionnaire 1,085 people from all over the country. The sample demographics was 46.4% male, with 2.6% in their teens, 23.1% in their twenties, 39.7% in their thirties, 24.8% in their forties, and 9.8% in their fifties.

As I have previously mentioned, I have three metrics tools; the two public ones linked from the sidebar for Performancing Metrics and SiteMeter plus the back-end statistics packages for analysing my server logs; I prefer the AwStats tool of the three or four available. I’m on the waiting list for Google Analytics, if it ever opens to the public again, and just a couple of days ago I also heard about an extremely interesting new tool, Crazy Egg, that seems to do a thermal imaging-like heat map to highlight exactly where people are clicking on your page. It looks very interesting, although for a blog with an ever-changing variable-width middle column, I’m not sure what will happen, but no doubt they’ve thought of that issue. I’d love to see the results for a typical blog with an enormously long blogroll, as I wonder which of them get clicked. As you might have noticed, I just have a short randomly ordered blogroll.
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Following on from the recent news about Softbank and Yahoo! buying all the outstanding shares of Vodafone Japan, itMedia published the results of a survey into mobile users’ views on Softbank entering the mobile phone market. The survey was carried out over five days at the end of March and the start of April, with 1200 people responding to a private questionnaire over the internet. The survey group consisted of 400 mobile phone users from each of the providers DoCoMo, au and Vodafone. More detailed demographic information, or where the group of users came from, is not stated.

The most interesting result is that for what people hope fill be the outcome of the deal, in particular regarding call and reception quality. It is a standing joke within the English-speaking community in Japan to call Vodafone “Borderfone” because of the perceived poor quality of reception. This survey shows that this is perhaps a valid criticism, as two in five Vodafone users are looking forward to improvements versus just a quarter of non-users.
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With the Golden Week holidays coming up fast in Japan, goo Ranking published the results of a survey on how long a holiday their regular readers were taking. As with most of the goo Rankings, sex and age demographics are not available; as I understand it the votes were though a presumably anonymous web poll. In the results, the top vote score 100 points, with the relative number of votes for the options expressed as percentage points, I believe.

Golden Week refers to the sequence of holidays at the start of May in Japan; the first holiday, みどりの日, midori no hi, Greenery Day is in fact on the 29th of April but it usually doesn’t technically count as part of Golden Week (don’t ask why!). This day used to be the previous Emporer’s Birthday Holiday, 天皇誕生日, tenno tanjobi, a national holiday (the current one is on the 23rd of December), so when the previous Emperor Showa died, they decided to keep the day as a holiday, so they renamed it to Greenery Day.

Returning to the main topic, the three main holidays start on the 3rd of May with 憲法記念日, kenpo ki’nenbi, Constitution Memorial Day, followed by 国民の休日, kokumin no kyujitsu, National People’s Day on the 4th, then こどもの日, kodomo no hi, Children’s Day on the 5th. In my case, work is shut down for the whole week, plus I’ve booked this Friday off as a personal holiday, so I have ten days off. Note that this means that my posting frequency might decrease next week.
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[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

The Cabinet Office of Japan (Gender Equality Bureau) recently published a survey it carried out on violence between males and females. This opinion poll was conducted by post, with 2,888 respondents, 1,578 or 54.6% female, out of 4,500 people initially randomly selected for participation.

This is a very large survey, so I will publish it in three parts.

Well, I hope you have found this survey interesting in some way. If you want to learn more about the Japanese government’s views on a gender-equal society, please visit the official English home page of the Gender Equlaity Bureau.

From tomorrow it will be back to more mainstream opinion polls!
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