世論 What Japan Thinks

[ part 1 | part 2 | part 3 ]

Continuing on from part one, the Cabinet Office, Government of Japan (that seems to be the official title anyway), conducted a wide-ranging survey regarding the people of Japan’s everyday life. This is rather a large survey, so it will be published in three parts on subsequent days. 6,924 people participated in the poll, conducted by face-to-face interviews in various areas throughout Japan. In this section, the Japanese reveal themselves to be rather materialistic, and even though the first part saw people most worried about their old age, living for today takes priority.

Q7: When you have had free time recently, what sort of activities have you performed? (Multiple answer)

Listening to radio or watching television	55.2%
Enjoying hobbies	40.8%
Leisurely resting	37.6%
Reading newspapers and magazines, etc	34.1%
Spend time with friends	30.0%
Enjoying things as a family group	29.9%
Going shopping	26.6%
Sports and other physical activities	19.0%
Going on trips	18.6%
Using computer or mobile phone to find out information, read mail, etc	16.3%
Absorbing knowledge	7.0%
Community or voluntary work	6.3%
Other	2.0%
Don’t know	0.7%

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[ part 1 | part 2 | part 3 ]

The Cabinet Office, Government of Japan (that seems to be the official title anyway), conducted a wide-ranging survey regarding the people of Japan’s everyday life. This is rather a large survey, so it will be published in three parts on subsequent days. 6,924 people participated in the poll, conducted by face-to-face interviews in various areas throughout Japan. Most people are basically happy to some degree, but the shadow of ill-health and old age hangs over many people.

Q1: Compared with this time last year, how is your home life?

Improving	4.0%
About the same	68.9%
Getting worse	26.1%
Don’t know	1.1%

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My Voice conducted a web-based survey of their registered users regarding home security issues. There seems to be a lot of worry about burglary in particular.

The survey was conducted at the start of October, with 16,346 respondents. 41% were male, and 4% teenagers, 23% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 23% in their forties, and 11% fifty and over.

Q1: How uneasy do you feel about public order and crime around the area where you live? (Sample size=16,346)

I feel uneasy	17.0%
I feel a little uneasy	51.4%
I don’t really feel uneasy	27.4%
I don’t feel uneasy at all	4.1%

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Searching around looking for a quote or two to bung up in that box on the top-left there (assuming you’re not reading this through the RSS feed, of course), I found that Jonathan Swift had once written “It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.” One could perhaps easily substitute “San Francisco Starbucks” to bring it right up to date, but I think it is even more apt to use “the Blogosphere” instead. This online echo chamber effect has got both defenders like Joi Ito and detractors like El Reg (and, for the sake of disclosure, me).

This site is trying to be a foam baffle in a Tokyo coffee-shop, to help the voice of the empire be heard above the petty squabbling of the Japanophiles and the Japanophobics.

Getting the latest (allegedly) healthy food introduced on shows like Aru-Aru Daijiten can result in the product being sold out not just the day after, but for weeks on end. The biggest effect I remember was when they introduced CoQ10, resulting in Nature Made being out of stock and on back order for months, and since the program (about 18 months ago, I think) I have never again seen Nature Made’s CoQ10 in stores in Japan, although apparently they do still make it. This survey on health foods seems more geared towards foodstuffs than supplements, though.

Nippon Research Center Ltd asked 2,200 people of both sexes, of whom 1,165 cooperated with the survey, aged between 15 and 79 from all around the country.
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Outside two of the railways stations in Osaka yesterday they were handing out census forms to find out about rail use in the city. There is an online option for submissions, but the web site seems to be broken! Note that the URL uses the English path /railcensus/ rather than Japanese /tetsudochousa/ or the like. I’ll be keen to see the results of this survey!

The questions are as follows:

Q1: What is the purpose of your first railway journey today?

• Commute to work
• Commute to school
• Work-related travel
• Private
• Returning home

Q2: When did you set out on this trip?

Q2A: What means of transport were used to get to the first railway station?

Q2B: When did you arrive at the first railway station on your trip?

Q3: For each train taken, please record the railway line name, the start and end station, the class of train (local, express, reserved seat or bullet train), whether you used a commutation pass, and if it was crowded or over-crowded.

Q4: When did you arrive at the final railway station on your trip?

Q4A: What means of transport were used to get to your ultimate destination?

Q5: For your second railway journey of the day, please record the similar details to those above.

Q6: If your second trip of the day did not take you home, and you didn’t return home by some other means, please record the start and end times and start and end station of your trip home.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is still doing well in the polls, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun’s survey. Whether or not any of this popularity rubs off on Bush when they meet in Kyoto tonight, and whether or not the two of them will address the US bases in Okinawa (around 72% oppose the relocation issue according to another recent poll) remains to be seen.

On the 12th and 13th of this month, the Yomiuri carried out a survey across the whole country (of how many people is not noted), and found that support for the cabinet was running at 61.0%, 1.6% percentage points up from the last survey on the 15th and 16th of last month. Those who did not support the cabinet was at 30.4%, down 2.0% points from last time.

As for the priority issues he should address, top was pensions and other social security system reforms at 63%, the third time in a row that this was top. Next was economic measures, at 59%, tax system reforms at 31%, child-rearing support and other birth rate decline counter-measures at 29%, and employment measures also at 29%.

One of the structural reforms that Koizumi’s cabinet wants to perform, public employee system reform, was chosen by only 18% of the respondents as a priority issue, 10th of the 17 options presented to the interviewees.

Support for the governing LDP was measured at 41.6%, just 0.4% down from last time, whilst the opposition DPJ was down 1.5% to 11.9%, and those holding no party allegiances was up 2.1% at 38.7%.

NEPRO IT co. ltd. recently performed a survey on the number of mobile phones people owned. The self-selecting prize draw survey was carried out on iMode, EZweb and Vodafone live! public web sites. 4,283 people, 60% female, replied to the survey carried out from the morning of October 6th to late into the night of the same day. 6% were 19 or under, 41% were 20 to 29, 38% were 30 to 39, and 15% 40 or older.

Q1: How many mobile phones are registered in your name? (Sample size=4,283)

One	64%
Two	17%
Three or more	5%
I have a phone but am not responsible for it (Company phone or other in family pays bill?)	12%
I don’t have a phone (How did they access the site then?)	1%
No answer	1%

Q2: Why do you have multiple phones registered in your name? (Sample size=4,283)

I only have one phone!	66%
Family use phones	16%
To keep private and business matters separate	4%
In case I cannot get a signal with the other	2%
I want to use different features in the phones	2%
To separate incoming and outgoing usage	1%
I want to use different designs or shapes	1%
Other reasons	10%

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The one complaint I most often hear about polls is from people who, because they weren’t asked their own opinion, believe the poll to be fatally flawed. However, statistics tells us that small sample sizes can give reasonably accurate results even for very large populations; therefore, the usual sample size of 1,000 or 2,000 for predicting the opinion of the whole country of Japan is sufficient, assuming the 2,000 are picked in a reasonably random fashion.

The second most common complaint is that internet polls are fatally flawed: many of the polls I translate here are carried out “on the internet”, but the most common type of internet poll I translate are the ones from closed monitor groups: these ads you see (probably in this story too!) for “Get Paid to Take Surveys” are from companies inviting you to join monitor groups, which you can usually do for free anyway, so please don’t part with any money in reply to these ads!

However, open internet surveys are usually hopelessly inaccurate, but I try to avoid these whereever possible, or at least make clear to the reader that there is a high degree of probability that the figures are totally inaccurate.

I’m having to moving across everything by hand from my old site! There is a script to do it automatically, but as I need to go through all the posts and add the categories, it’s almost as fast, I suppose, to do it by hand.

I’m also listed on Google already! Searching for “what japan thinks” shows me on the front page already. My old site, after almost three months of hard blogging, is still languishing down on the ninth page…