世論 What Japan Thinks

A recent survey from iBridge Research Plus, reported on by japan.internet.com, into the computer recycling law found a significant percentage unaware of the details, a category I fall into too, I suppose.

Demographics

On the 19th of April 2010 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 59.3% of the sample were male, 12.7% in their twenties, 30.7% in their thirties, 34.3% in their forties, 15.3% in their fifties, and 7.0% in their sixties.

The Law for Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources came into being in 2003, but due to almost no computers being recycled, a new version, the PC Recycle Law, was enacted in 2008. About all I know about it is that it means that you cannot throw away old computers and monitors, etc; you have to pay a fee to get them collected. Therefore, I have sitting in my trunk room an old motherboard and flat-screen monitor that I don’t really feel like paying a fee for, so they might sit there until we move house.
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Another quick survey from goo Ranking to finish off Sunday, this time looking at what rules people follow to have an enjoyable solo holiday.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 25th of March 2010 1,128 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.5% of the sample were female, 15.1% in their teens, 16.9% in their twenties, 28.8% in their thirties, 21.1% in their forties, 9.4% in their fifties, and 8.7% 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.

B-grade delicacies have been getting a lot of coverage on the television over the last couple of years – they are the soul food, I suppose, of the region; Osaka would be okonomiyaki or takoyaki, or for a reference from my home country, Glasgow would be deep-fried Mars Bar washed down with Irn Bru.

I don’t know if I have any particular rules when I’ve been on solo holidays; before I got married I did travel a bit around the Kansai region and didn’t often ask the way, but that was as much due to not knowing the language and being an anti-social git!
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Here’s an interesting look by goo Ranking at why people are determined to successfully diet, with separate results for both men and women.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 25th of March 2010 1,128 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.5% of the sample were female, 15.1% in their teens, 16.9% in their twenties, 28.8% in their thirties, 21.1% in their forties, 9.4% in their fifties, and 8.7% 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 reason for losing weight is that we both need to lose weight and my wife has said she will if I do. I’m surprised that that reason didn’t come up in the survey. I also need to lose weight as I’ve fallen into the metabo bracket due purely to me not breathing in enough when they measured my waist! I was less than a centimetre over the limit, honest!
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It’s been a while since I’ve done a FAIL survey, so I’m sure you’ve all missed them. This time it was goo Ranking looking at internet shopping site FAILs.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 25th of March 2010 1,128 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.5% of the sample were female, 15.1% in their teens, 16.9% in their twenties, 28.8% in their thirties, 21.1% in their forties, 9.4% in their fifties, and 8.7% 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.

I don’t think I’ve had a failure shopping for a while, as it’s almost exclusively services or downloadable software I purchase. I did have a failure when I switched my domains to GoDaddy, then after a year they billed me for some useless directory service – I’ve since changed everything over to Namecheap.com who are, as the name suggests, cheap and, more importantly, do not try to upsell you at every opportunity. They also do domain anonymising at a very reasonable rate.

The wife buys some waffle cakes online occasionally, but I can’t help thinking that since a branch of the waffle shop is located at the next station down the line, we’d be cheaper buying from there.
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With tomorrow being Mothers Day in Japan, here’s an interesting look by iShare at issues relating to Mothers Day.

Demographics

Between the 19th and 22nd of April 2010 468 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 59.0% of the sample were male, 29.9% in their twenties, 33.1% in their thirties, and 37.0% in their forties.

I never had a period of hating my mother, and I’m not just saying that because I know she reads my blog! However, I’ve never bought her a Mothers Day present as she doesn’t believe in that sort of thing, although I did once send her a bunch of flowers that I won in a Mothers Day promotion at a supermarket. The wife makes sure her mother gets a present every year, and this year was an alpaca cushion with a cherry blossom pot-pouri in its bum…
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Although the survey is biased towards heavy users of mobiles, this recent survey from Point On Research into mobile wallpaper found a quite high percentage of people willing to pay for dynamic wallpaper.

Demographics

On the 23rd of April 2010 800 heavy users of mobile phones complted a private mobile phone-based survey. The sample was 50:50 male and female, 25.0% in their teens, 25.0% in their twenties, 25.0% in their thirties, and 25.0% in their forties. The exact definition of “heavy user” is not given, but I would imagine as a start it is people who max out their all-you-can-use data plans.

Note that Q1 indicates a bias away from SoftBank and toward au mostly – the usual split is around 45:30:20:5.

Funnily enough, today I saw an ad on my mobile phone and wanted to download a free Sento-kun 3D animated wallpaper, but my ancient phone cannot support it!

Note that wallpaper can function as both a backdrop and an animated screensaver, which explains to some extent the significant amount of Flash.
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It is the tradition that the wife manages the family budget, and that the husband merely gets a pocket money allowance, but this recent survey from iShare looked at the current situation regarding money management.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 5th of April 2010 1,275 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.3% of the sample were male, 31.1% were in their twenties, 33.5% in their thirties, and 35.2% in their forties.

I was watching a program on general money-related advice a couple of days ago, and they said that actually not giving the husband an allowance is better, or if there is an allowance, make it a percentage of salary (including bonus!) as an incentive. To illustrate the point, they interviewed a few people on the street and the guys with allowances were asked what they did when their pocket money ran out. The answers broadcast included buying stuff with credit card instead (presumably the wife didn’t check receipts) or borrowing money from their parents!
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Oops, I forgot to post this last night!

A recent survey conducted by goo Research into computers was reported on by japan.internet.com, where they chose to focus on PLC-related questions. PLC is Power Line Communication, using existing electrical circuits as network cabling.

Demographics

Between the 13th and 16th of April 2010 1,088 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.3% of the sample were male, 16.1% in their teens, 17.9% in their twenties, 21.1% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 16.5% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

The total awareness from Q1 is 39.0%, yet last year it was 48.5%, and 51.7% two years ago. Similarly, the usage rate dropped from 2.8% to 1.4% over the space of the last year.

It’s supposed to be a good and cheap way to network and more secure than wireless, although interference when other electrical devices switch on and off is the biggest drawback.
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With one of the hottest topics in Japan being Prime Minister Hayoyama’s repeated dithering over the Futenma base in Okinawa, and with a frequently-appearing theme being the desire of Okinawa to be a nation again, I thought I should look up some data to see what the situation really is. The best I managed to find was a survey entitled “Okinawa Identity”, one which took place in 2005, 2006 and 2007. I couldn’t find the original report, but this blog post extracts some key points from a newspaper column on said survey.

Demographics

On the 3rd and 4th of November 2007 2,000 people were telephoned, with 1,201 choosing to reply. How the numbers were chosen was not reported, not was any further demographic information.
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Even though one large English conversation school went bust last week, learning English still seems to have a high cachet attached to it, if this recent survey from goo Ranking into what people think cool guys study. There is a hint of a follow-up survey into what cute girls are into, so I’ll be sure to translate that later.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 25th of March 2010 1,128 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.5% of the sample were female, 15.1% in their teens, 16.9% in their twenties, 28.8% in their thirties, 21.1% in their forties, 9.4% in their fifties, and 8.7% 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.

I must say I have zero idea why people answered the way they did. I can maybe agree up to number 7, but then we get bread-making and interior design! Wedding planning and meteorology bamboozle me even further. Finally, it’s interesting that about the most macho activity is karate – I’m wondering if the survey question was actually “What do you think herbivore boys would be studying?”
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