世論 What Japan Thinks

The hanami, cherry blossom viewing, season is in full swing, which means all the popular areas are packed, making for not really a very pleasant experience in my opinion. Thus, this survey from iShare into hanami information sites looked into “air hanami”, just looking at the photos and not bothering visiting in person.

Demographics

Between the 10th and 15th of March 2010 548 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.9% of the sample were male, 33.9% in their twenties, 31.2% in their thirties, and 34.9% in their forties.

Watching the television this last weekend, I saw that Ueno Park in Tokyo had around 100,000 visitors on Saturday! I find the crowds too much bother, so I make do with looking at Kema Sakuranomiya Park in Osaka through the window of the train to and from work.

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Here’s another interesting survey from goo Ranking, this time looking at what lies we tell that come back to haunt us.

Demographics

Over the 22nd and 23rd of February 2010 1,123 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.6% of the sample were female, 9.6% in their teens, 22.2% in their twenties, 32.1% in their thirties, 24.9% in their forties, 7.5% in their fifties, and 3.8% 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 biggest lie was announcing to friends back in Scotland shortly after moving to Japan that I now had a million in the bank, but without pointing out it was in the rather less impressive yen, not pounds. I also lived in a royal mansion when I first came to Japan.

For number 13, I would have thought claiming not to be married would have been a bigger problem!

My wife doesn’t need to lie about 2,　4, 5, 15, 16 and 20. At least I hope she’s not lying about them…
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With graduation season just finished in Japan, here’s a look with goo Ranking at people’s memories, both the sad ones for men and women and the happy ones for men and women.

Demographics

Over the 22nd and 23rd of February 2010 1,123 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.6% of the sample were female, 9.6% in their teens, 22.2% in their twenties, 32.1% in their thirties, 24.9% in their forties, 7.5% in their fifties, and 3.8% 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.

Although the URL uses “happy” and most of the Q2 incidents seem happy to me, the actual question used “bitter-sweet”, for a reason I’m not really to sure about!

I don’t really remember anything in particular about my university graduation day, but looking at the list of event below I think they are more talking about school graduation, I think. We didn’t have any of that graduation nonsense when I was in school – the last day of school on the final year was pretty much like the last day every other year.
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iBridge Research Plus recently conducted a survey, reported on by japan.internet.com, into the matter of free papers.

Demographics

On the 8th of March 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.0% of the sample were male, 9.0% in their twenties, 31.0% in their thirties, 32.7% in their forties, 23.0% in their fifties, and 4.3% in their sixties.

I get about two or three free papers every fortnight through my door, usually filled with just classified advertisements and restaurant and beauty information with coupons, which I always check as my favourite local restaurant usually has a 10% off offer on the go.

Just one person reads foreigner-oriented free sheets – all I can say is that I’m glad my wife did too…
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Recently japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by Marsh Inc into car (satellite) navigation systems.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 14th of March 2010 300 driving license-holding car owners completed a private internet-baed questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were female, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

In the west I have been getting the impression recently that dedicated car navigation devices are being pushed out by smartphones with often free navigation software. However, in Japan the market is quite well-established with large-screen feature-filled system the norm, so perhaps smartphones will have less of an impact here. That would be an interesting aspect to perform a survey on.

The report does note that compared to just seven months ago (September 2009), the share of owners has gone up by five percentage points.
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This interesting survey from iShare took a look at outcome of arguments, which revealed the rather unbelievable statistic of more women than men apologising…

Demographics

Between the 5th and 10th of March 2010 509 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.0% of the sample were male, 31.8% in their twenties, 32.6% in their thirties, and 35.6% in their forties.

Although Q1 and Q2 don’t directly specify who people are arguing with in private, one can assume that one’s partner is often the other combatant, although as mentioned above, the number of women self-reporting that they apologise seems rather high. However, Q2SQ balances it out with nearly twice as many men indicating that apologies don’t always calm the other side down.
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Despite all of the mobile carriers offering free calls to family, this recent survey conducted by Point On Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into mobile phone voice calls found that despite family being the favourite destination for calls, the frequency of calling was quite low.

Demographics

On the 16th of March 2010 800 heavy users of mobile phones completed a private mobile internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 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.

I’m one of the ones with the free family calls who only makes a voice call about once a month or so, instead we use about three to six emails a day to communicate – email is also free, of course.

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Yet another survey on illegal downloads, this time from iShare, pussy-foots around the direct question of whether people have downloaded or not, although there are some interesting answers in the survey, for some reason entitled “the morals of young people“, suggesting there were a number of other unreported questions asked.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 9th of March 2010 834 people from the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 64.1% of the sample were male, 11.4% in their teens, and 88.4% in their twenties. This is quite an unusual survey demographic for iShare.

To educate the public, there has been a site set up to educate the public on the recent change in the law. The site is called in Japanese やめよう！違法ダウンロード, yameyou! Ihou download, Stop! Illegal Download, and can be found at the rather quaint URL http://www.happy-musiccycle.jp/.

The change in the law this January has outlawed download – up to then it was only illegal to upload; downloading was fine, even through P2P software, as long as you set it to leech mode only. The site has a FAQ with the answer to a few questions, including one interesting one that says it is still legal to burn a CD and give it to your mother. I would guess that CD rental shops fall under this clause so you are still free to rent’n'rip.
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Another popular topic for foreigners in Japan to whinge about is sneezing and the reluctance to cover coughs. So, this survey from iShare on that very topic perhaps gives us some concrete data on which to base our prejudices.

Demographics

Between the 3rd and 8th of March 2010 496 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.0% of the sample were male, 30.6% in their twenties, 33.9% in their thirties, and 35.5% in their forties.

The old codger sneeze in the title comes from Q3 and the phrase おじさんくさい, ojisan-kusai, a smell of old men. Recently, with hay fever and whatnot, I must admit to being rather loud and with a bit of excessive follow-through on my sneezes at home, although when out I almost always sneeze into my sleeve.
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A recent survey from Marsh Inc, reported on by japan.internet.com, into online shopping found that Rakuten was the top online shop, used by over two-thirds of the online shoppers in this survey.

Demographics

Between the 3rd and 5th of March 2010 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were female, 1.3% in their teens, 18.7% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

I know I’ve previously slagged off Rakuten as a bunch of spammers and toolbar pushers, but they do actually have good shops there, and at least it’s just my wife who has to deal with the spam! Our latest purchase was a lucky bag of organic vegetables for 777 yen delivered straight to the door. That’s about half the price that it might have been at a supermarket.
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