世論 What Japan Thinks

Zangyo is the Japanese for overtime, and when it is sandwiched between two English words as in the title of this article it refers to a system that seems surprisingly common, No Overtime Day, a weekly event in my office where people are supposed to go home at five o’clock. This survey from iShare took a look at its implementation.

Demographics

Between the 22nd and 25th of June 2010 429 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.6% of the sample were male, 31.9% in their twenties, 31.0% in their thirties, and 37.1% in their forties.

Today was No Zangyo Day in the office. As I had to go to the hospital this morning I had to work an extra hour and 45 minutes to make up, yet I was still first to leave the office! Our Team Leader announced around about 18:30 that it was No Overtime Day and oughtened we think about going home, which is really about the extent of the implementation for me. However, other groups in the same building are better at going home, and I do notice the train station outside work is busier in the early evening on Wednesdays.
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This very detailed piece of research into women, housework and domestic appliances by Yahoo! Japan Value Insight revealed a lot of information about what the average Japanese kitchen looks like.

Demographics

Between the 9th and 12th of June 2010 800 women aged between 20 and 39 completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 25% fell into each of the age groups 20 to 24, 25 to 29, 30 to 34 and 35 to 39. 400 of the women in the sample were in full-time work, and 400 were either full-time housewives or out of work. All of them lived within the Tokyo area; either Tokyo itself or the neighbouring prefectures of Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa. Finally, those living with parents, siblings or other relatives, or living with friends were eliminated, thus all the working singles would be living alone.

Although I’ve detailed the demographics above, you’ll note that the totals in the questions below don’t add up to 800, but the reason for that is unclear.

In Q4 I’m also unsure of the difference between not wasting water and not sending too much down the drain.
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Here’s an interesting look by iShare on a topic I’ve not seen covered in detail in either Japan or the English-speaking sphere, a look at personal video creation, in particular how people use them on video sharing sites like YouTube or the Japanese equivalent Nico-Nico Douga.

Demographics

Between the 16th and 21st of June 2010 533 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.2% of the sample were male, 28.9% in their twenties, 35.5% in their thirties, and 35.6% in their forties.

The vast majority of videos I watch on YouTube are cat ones. However, I recently came across this slightly NSFW series of remixes of a song about a horse, which was rather entertaining.
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This latest survey from goo Ranking looked at what aspects of current coworkers do they hate.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 24th of May 2010 1,152 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 61.0% of the sample were male, 11.2% in their teens, 20.7% in their twenties, 28.8% in their thirties, 21.8% in their forties, 10.2% in their fifties, and 7.3% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

My complaints would be constant sniffing and passive-aggressive behaviour. I’d also admit to doing more than one or two of the activities on the list…
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It’s a while since I’ve looked at a Wikipedia survey, and although the numbers haven’t changed significantly since the last time, this survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into Wikipedia serves as a reminder that it’s still as popular as ever.

Demographics

Between the 24th and 26th of June 2010 1,097 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 17.0% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 15.4% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

I’ve done some editing of Wikipedia myself; wearing a different hat on one of my other blogs I’ve made amendments to some of the Trusted Computing-related entries. However, being in favour of it, myself and a couple of other users are outnumbered by those wishing to retain the NPOV that Trusted Computing is the spawn of the devil^{[citation not needed]}.
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In this the latest mobile phone upgrade needs survey from goo Research, their 52nd in the series, in the report by japan.internet.com they chose to focus on camera-related issues.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 23rd of June 2010 exactly 1,000 mobile phone users from the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.1% of the survey were female, 1.9% in their teens, 13.3% in their twenties, 24.4% in their thirties, 29.2% in their forties, and 21.2% aged fifty or older.

In the latest round of summer model mobile phones, they are a good number now with 13 megapixel cameras, although as most people will tell you, it’s not the raw megapixels but the quality of the sensor that is important. On a mobile with a limited size and often cheap lens, above five or eight megapixels you’ll not see any benefit, and perhaps even a degradation.
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This isn’t the first survey to indicate this, but this recent survey from Media Interactive, reported on by japan.internet.com, into Apple’s iPhone backed up statistics on the iPhone being almost as much a second phone as an only phone.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 23rd of June 2010 exactly 1,000 internet users completed an online survey. 51.5% of the sample were male, 0.8% in their teens, 15.2% in their twenties, 30.2% in their thirties, 29.1% in their forties, 17.1% in their fifties, and 7.6% in their sixties.

You may want to check out yesterday’s look at the iPad.

I must admit to feeling a bit jealous of iPhone and other smartphone users these days, and sadly my summer bonus isn’t enough to cover an upgrade. However, I won’t touch SoftBank, and docomo’s recent annoucement of their removal of SIM Lock from next year will probably delay my upgrade even longer.

Note that the survey was conducted between the 21st and 23rd of June, but the iPhone 4 didn’t go on sale until the day after, 24th June 2010, and that the 2G original iPhone was never released in Japan.
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With the iPad having been out in Japan for just about a month, iBridge Research Plus thought it about time to conduct another survey on Apple’s iPad. japan.internet.com chose to focus on the business applicability of the device in their report.

Demographics

On the 21st of June 2010 300 employed members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 72.3% of the sample were male, 14.7% in their twenties, 33.7% in their thirties, 29.7% in their forties, 19.0% in their fifties, and 3.0% in their sixties.

Shortly after it came out I read an article about a doctor in Japan using one in the operating theatre. At least he put it into a bag, but I thought it was a highly irresponsible thing to do, as the wi-fi could have interfered with the critical devices, for instance. For general hospital use, it needs a lot of work to be either germ-proof or washable – Panasonic already make a robust but boring tablet for medical use, but I’d be much more comfortable seeing a medical professional using that instead of an iPad!

I think the significant roles for the iPad in business are perhaps limited to photography-related work and to life insurance and other financial salespeople, especially of the home visiting type. There’s probably also a niche for travel agents as a terminal for customers to view virtual brochures and the like.
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The fifth regular survey into consumer games machines by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com found that in the last year just one in six had increased their games playing.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 15th of June 2010 1,073 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.6% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, and 27.3% aged fifty or older.

I wonder how many of the 43 others in Q1 owned iPod Touches or iPads? They aren’t really games machines per se, but they do get advertised as such, so it would be interesting to see them broken out. Furthermore, if they were counted, I wonder how many of these people are playing more games on their Apples? Let’s hope the sixth time round they have a look.
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The first question one might have is what is diversity; the immediate thing that springs to my mind, at least, is having an anti-discrimination policy at work covering race, creed, gender and sexual orientation. However, in this survey into diversity management by goo Research only one and a half (“foreign” rather than “race”) of these groups appear.

Demographics

Between the 16th and 21st of June 2010 930 members of the goo Research monitor group employed in companies with more than 50 employees completed a private internet-base questionnaire. The sex and age splits were not reported, but 23.3% worked in manufacturing, 14.9% in service, food or drink, 10.5% for local or national government, 9.8% in retail, 9.5% in information or distribution, 6.8% in construction or real estate, 5.6% in finance, 4.3% in distribution, 1.6% in farming, fisheries, forestry, mining, or utilities, and 13.7% in other industry. 16.3% worked for companies with between 50 and 99 employees, 30.1% with 100 to 499 employees, 11.0% with 500 to 999 employees, 19.9% with 1,000 to 4,999 employees, and 22.7% in companies with 5,000 or more employees.

The company I work for does just about everything in Q1. I’m not sure about a specific older person employment scheme, whatever that might be, but we do actively hire staff in mid-career, not just new graduates. We’re extremely active recently in foreigner employment, and I’m surprised that our managing director’s recent writings on the matter have barely hit the Japanese newspapers and blogs, let alone the English-language sphere.

It’s interesting that diversity management here seems to be more about diverse employment patterns for existing staff, trying to allow for working styles other than the 9 to 5 10, work before family. As mentioned above, our company has generous paternity leave on offer, but even this year when two guys’ wives gave birth the guys took one day off for the birth and another for when she came out of hospital before returning to the same old 9 to 10 (pm of course) regardless of necessity.

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