世論 What Japan Thinks

infoPLANT surveyed 6,128 users of DoCoMo iMode phones in mid-January by means of a questionnaire available through a publically-accessible iMode menu option regarding people’s views on matters relating to stocks and shares. The sample replying to this survey was 62.1% female, with 3.1% teenaged, 38.9% in their twenties, 41.9% in their thirties, 14.0% in their forties, and just 2% aged 50 or over.

Note that some of the raw data that I have translated looked a bit dodgy, so I cannot vouch for the quality of this survey as there may very well be errors in the raw data in addition to any biases in the survey methodology. I note that those with no interest in shares tend to select the “Other” option to the second and third question, which suggests perhaps there needs to be new services dreamed up to engage those disinterested, but on the other hand it probably means that it was just the default option people had to select to complete the form, as there was no “Not interested” answer available!
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MyVoice carried out a fun survey of their MyVoice internet community at the start of December last year to find out their views on potato crisps. 14,846 people completed the internet-based questionnaire. 58% were female, 4% in their teens, 23% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 23% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties (was no-one older than that?).

I really love Japanese crisps; there is a huge variety of flavours, and Calbee especially put out lots and lots of special limited edition bags. One series that started about two years ago was plain flavour, but salted with salt from various parts of the country. Okinawa’s Ishigaki is the only one I can clearly remember, although they did also have one from Kyushu and one from Hokkaido. Another great series, where they release two new snacks (corn or other starch shapes rather than standard potato crisps, I suppose) every six months is still ongoing; they’ve had ume flavour (sour plums), soy beans, onion and pumpkin, to name the ones that spring to mind, all accompanied by very imaginative advertising. They’re difficult to find, but well worth picking up. We also have two bags of more normal crisps sitting around awaiting eating; one is in the international cuisine series, an Italian (allegedly) basil and cheese flavour, and the other is as pictured above, 梅かつお, ume-katsuo, sour plums and bonito fish flakes, which will probabaly be as revolting as it sounds. However, the package design is excellent – note the plum flowers, with the release of this product timed to coincide with the plum blossoms.

Note that a standard bag of crisps weighs in at about 65 to 80 grammes and costs a little over 100 yen, although the supermarkets I frequent often have one or two flavours on special offer of 99 yen a bag. Imported stuff like Kettle Chips can cost well over 400 yen each, although last month I was lucky enough to find some Canadian crisps on clearout sale for 100 yen at my local supermarket.
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[part 1] [part 2]

Over four days at the end of November and start of December last year, goo Research carried out a closed internet-based survey of 2,207 businesspeople to find out about the use of intra-company communication tools and blogs, and other related matters.

Note that this survey was carried out before probably the most famous Japanese blogging CEO became an ex-president and an ex-blogger, so I wonder how the answers to the questions in this second half would change if this survey were repeated today.

One thing I noticed from the company I worked for’s attempt to introduce a community was that a cheerleader or evangelist is needed to help get the ball rolling. Although the next survey question suggests that over half the people want to see management backing, the backing in itself is not the key, I don’t think, it is that the bosses should also be in the vanguard, otherwise there may be a tendency for the whole think to just fizzle out.
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[part 1] [part 2]

Over four days at the end of November and start of December last year, goo Research carried out a closed internet-based survey of 2,207 businesspeople to find out about the use of intra-company communication tools and blogs, and other related matters.

This is one subject I’d love to wax lyrical on, but sadly I suspect I’d probably get sacked if my boss read what I want to say! Suffice to say I am unaware of a blog by our prez; most of his communications are by PDF files. About a year ago we did try to introduce a community-based service that failed, perhaps partially due to it being seen as a gaijin thing, but more importantly … I’d better self-censor this post now.

The main problem people report is regarding information overload; either simply too much data or inability to highlight the new information. Interestingly, almost two-thirds are interested in work-related blogs, yet only just over half are interested in a community site, although the survey does not make clear what definition of “community” was used.
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Regardless of how long I live here, and how often people try to explain the Yakuza to me, I always shake my head in disbelief when I see stories like this one on the guys who put the Organised into Organised Crime.

Crime syndicates in Japan had around 86,300 members as of Dec. 31, down some 700 from a year earlier, marking the first drop in 10 years, the National Police Agency said Thursday. The Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi, accounted for 50.1% of all the members, passing the majority threshold for the first time.

What sort of questionnaire got these answers? Do the gangs submit annual reports? I can only imagine the text: “The chairman reports that outstanding bad debts are down 22.9% due to a 16.3% increase in the number of kneecaps broken. Workforce loyalty is also strong, as indicated by a two-thirds reduction in pinkie removals.” Three significant figures of accuracy suggests relatively detailed numbers are being obtained from somewhere, but where?

Note that the graph above may not, in fact, be truthful. In fact, I may very well have made it all up!

NEPRO JAPAN Co, Ltd recently carried out a survey to see what people do to economise on their mobile phone bills. For one day at the start of December they questioned 5,013 people across the three main Japanese carriers, DoCoMo’s iMode, Vodafone’s Vodafone live! and au and TU-KA’s EZweb, by means of a public poll available through the main menus of all three carriers’ systems. 40% of the sample were male; 4% were teenagers, 41% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, and 16% aged forty and over.

Note that this one-day public questionnaire will tend to attract the people who are already heavy users of mobile web services, although in this case this is probably a good thing.

Mobile phone bills in Japan are rather difficult for me to understand; even something as simple as displaying how much you’d be paying if you were on the most basic plan as a means of comparison would help. Even better would be a recommendation of your best plan based on your last six month’s worth of charges.
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This is my first translation from JR Tokai Express Research, apparently part of the Central Japan Railways group of companies, and it’s a very topical subject, a look at what people are thinking about regarding the upcoming Turin Olympics. They interviewed 436 people by means of an internet questionnaire over four days at the start of February, although it is not clear how they collected this sample. 110 people were in their twenties, 111 in their thirties, 110 in their forties, 110 in their fifties and 95 ages sixty or over. The numbers for each sex is not given.

Although the host city’s name in English is Turin, the Japanese use (as would be expected, of course) the Italian pronunciation as the guide for adopting it into Japanese, thus Torino. As one of these “You know you’ve been in Japan too long…” moments, I’m familiar with the locations of Torino, Firenze, Munchen, etc, but occasionally I have to pause to translate Vienna and Naples in order to understand where they are. Mind you, back when I was a kid, and in fact up until I was about 25 years old or so, I was under the impression that Ibiza and Eye-bee-tha were two totally separate places.
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Tonight’s Trivia no Izumi had a viewer writing in asking what was the best way to conduct oneself on Saint Valentine’s Day in order to improve one’s chances of getting chocolate from a woman – remember that in Japan St Valentine’s Day is gifts from women to men only.

First up they asked 500 men what they would do, and got a panel of 100 women to vote on each of the activities to see if they agreed it might improve their chances. Amongst the collected suggestions were talking in a loud voice, working a bit harder or conducting oneself more lively, gelling or otherwise styling one’s hair, and acting cool. Each of these options garnered a mere handful of votes from the female panelists, the best score being an insignificant 7 out of 100, proving that in Japan too, men are from 火星 and women are from 金星 (Mars and Venus, of course; literally the fire and gold planets respectively).

So, taking a different tack, they enlisted the help of four female psychologists to try to find out what they thought men should do. After a three-hour exchange of views, the collected opinion on how men can increase their chance of getting Valentine’s chocolates was simply to leave your bag open by your desk over lunch or other break time, so your secret admirer could silently slip the prezzie in without fear of a confrontation or rejection.

If you hear about a massive increase of thefts from briefcases next week, you know who to blame!

On the 27th of January, japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, published their 23rd survey on blogging. 1,076 people from all around the country and of all ages completed the internet-based questionnaire. 42.3% were male, 3.4% teenagers, 24.4% in their twenties, 38.0% in their thirties, 24.4% in their forties, and 9.7% fifty or over.

See also the recent story from Mutant Frog to understand the Japanese blogosphere a bit better. I find it interesting that over 70% have had a trackback, but less than 40% have made one. I wonder how these figures compare with other countries? Mutant Frog suggested that the Japanese blog world is mostly ignorant of the world outside its borders. Are many of the bloggers also blogging purely for themselves? Of course another factor is that people may not be aware that their blogging platform automatically trackbacks any links.
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At the end of November and start of December DIMSDRIVE Research surveyed 6,459 people, 2,709 of them male, by means of an internet-based questionnaire to find out what they thought of influenza and related topics. The age breakdown was 1.3% 19 or under, 18.0% in their twenties, 36.8% in their thirties, 27.1% in their forties, 12.4% in their fifties and 4.4% sixty and over.

Last year there was quite a bit of bird flu in some of the chicken batteries, but as far as I am aware there was no transmission to humans. At that point there was a knock-on effect on chicken and egg consumption, but now the bird flu news is all from overseas, so I suspect no-one is connecting it with food yet. As can be seen below, the Japanese a big fans of gargling, and indeed in a couple of the buildings of the company I work for there are strategically-placed iodine-laced water fountains for gargling. However, the effectiveness of gargling with iodine has been questioned by another study, although note that it does point out that it was not double-blinded.

Just this lunchtime, however, I did see a kid in my local bread shop, with his head at just the right height to sneeze over the bread on display coughing away, without a word from him mother. Covering one’s mouth with one’s hand when coughing is not really that popular.
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