世論 What Japan Thinks

This survey from MyVoice is their third home use air conditioner survey. I thought I had translated their second air conditioner survey last year, but it turns out it was from DIMSDRIVE Research instead. And it was more interesting…

Demographics

Over the first five days of September 2008 15,465 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online survey. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teeens, 15% in their twenties, 36% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 19% in their fifties.

I looked at the previous survey and I discovered I said just about everything I know about Japanese air conditioners! I do get people searching occasionally for Japanese air conditioner manuals – the functionality is often rather complex and if you can’t read Japanese it’s difficult to know what to do. Now, there’s an idea for a Web 2.0 site – www.rimoconmaster.com (rimocon being the Japanese abbreviation for REMOte CONtroller), upload a photo of your remote (and rice cooker, microwave, etc) with the buttons labeled, or without them labeled and get other users to fill in the functions.
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With summer fast approaching and the Meteorological Agency predicting it will be a hotter than average summer over most of the country, let’s take a look at a recent survey by DIMSDRIVE Research regarding air conditioners

Demographics

Between the 18th and 26 of April 2007 DIMSDRIVE Research received 8,925 valid replies to a private internet-based questionnaire circulated around members of its monitor panel. 54.5% of the sample was female, 0.8% in their teens, 13.4% in their twenties, 35.8% in their thirties, 30.2% in their forties, 14.3% in their fifties, and 5.5% aged sixty or older. As a bonus demographic fact, 27.3% of the sample had a pet.

My current domicile is cooled mostly by Daikin air conditioners, which I wouldn’t really recommend to anyone, but we ended up being sort-of stuck with them. My previous residence was all National/Panasonic, which are very good. However, I have on reliable authority that the cleaning robots inside some of the newer models are very noisy, and it was my experience that unless you are a smoker or live close to a busy road, cleaning is not really that bothersome.

Note that in Q5, according to the Cool Biz and Warm Biz initiatives you should set your heating to 20 degrees Celcius in the winter and 28 degrees Celcius in the summer. Barely one in five during the summer and perhaps the similar amount in the winter follow this advice.

As a side note on the usage of drum-type washing machines, I suggested to my Japanese wife that our next washing machine be a drum type as they use less water, but she said she’d lose the ability to wash blankets and other large items.
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