世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted over three days at the end of August and the start of September by Cross Marketing into mobile phone applications. They interviewed 300 mobile phone users from their monitor group by means of a private internet poll; the group was split 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties and 20.0% in their fifties.

Note that here “application” refers to, in the DoCoMo world, the iAppli, Java-based applications, some of which come preinstalled, and others can be downloaded that provide functionality (or fun) in addition to the basic set of tools. My phone, for instance, came with a shoot’em up game, a dog simulator, TV remote control, a graphical mail application (I think, I can’t work it!) and some sort of IM chat application (but I can’t figure that one out either, though!).
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey by Cross Marketing Inc into how people check the time. They interviewed 300 mobile phone users from their internet monitor group at the end of August, 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

You may remember a previous survey about two months ago where it was reported that about 40% of Japanese use their mobile phones as their main alarm clock. I also rarely wear a wristwatch, prefering to peek at my mobile for the time checks. It’s not quite as convenient as a watch, but a watch just gets in the way when I’m typing, I feel.
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japan.internet.com published the results of a survey performed in the middle of August by Cross Marketing Inc into the use of mobile phone email. As usual for this company, they interviewed 150 men and 150 women who owned mobile phones by means of a private internet survey. One sixth were in their teens, twenties, and so on up to the sixties. Although the full survey covered many aspects of mobile phone email, this extract concerns just sending email.

This is another of these surveys that in itself is perhaps not too interesting in itself, especially to one who is not a resident of Japan, but as I was translating I could relate it to how I have seen others use email and have realised their way of using is not really that odd after all.

For me, nearly all my email (around five per day) is to my wife, and her address is set up as a kind of shortcut, so I think I’d be in the “Other” group for Q3.
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japan.internet.com published the results of a survey by Cross Marketing Inc into pay contents for mobile phones. At the end of July they interviewed 300 people from their internet monitor group. As usual for Cross Marketing, the sample was evenly split, 50:50 male and female, and a fifth aged 18 or 19, a fifth in their twenties, and so on up to a fifth of the sample aged between 50 and 59.

The authors suggest that a key reason for people not paying very much, if at all, for mobile contents is due to the ability now to be able to surf the internet and discover lots of free content. However, to me this ignores certain obstacles like the quality of browsers and the lack of sites designed for mobiles. In addition, the most popular option, downloading ring tones, has recently become much cheaper, with lots of 100 yen (plus 5 yen tax) per month all-you-can-download sites getting heavy television promotion.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on research by Cross Marketing Inc regarding people’s views on restaurant search web sites. They interviewed 320 people who had used a restaurant search site by means of a private internet questionnaire; half of the sample were male, and a quarter in each of the age groups of their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties.

This particular segment of the market seems to have assumed the title グルメ, gurume, the Japanese transliteration of gourmet (actually from the French, not English), which is the reason that a number of the web sites listed below start with Guru-.

In my experience, Guru-Navi seems the first stop for most of the people I know; one benefit of the site is that many of the listed restaurants also have discount coupons available for printing out.
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japan.internet.com recently published a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into telecommunication karaoke. That’s a bit of an ugly term, but it’s the translation my dictionary offers for 通信カラオケ, tsuushin karaoke, or karaoke machines that can connect to a server to download the latest music. Over three days in the middle of July 300 members of Cross Marketing’s monitor team who go to karaoke at least once a year replied to a closed internet questionnaire. As usual for Cross Marketing, there was a 50:50 male-female split, and 20% in each of the five age groups; 18 to 19 years old, twenties, thirties, forties and fifties.

I’ve not been to karaoke for ages and ages; when I was dating, we went quite a few times, but love is deaf as well as blind, so since we got married my wife’s told me that my singing voice is horrible; yes, I knew already that I was tone-deaf (音痴, onchi, or tone-stupid in Japanese), but I lost all confidence after being told that! A fellow foreigner friend of mine also often frequents a karaoke room, partially for the inclusive all-you-can-drink deals and partially to satisfy his love of 演歌, enka, Japanese folk-songs (sort-of anyway; read the link).
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey by Cross Marketing Inc into the use of mobile phone alarms. Over two days at the end of June they interviewed 300 members of their monitor panel by means of a private internte-based questionnaire. As is usual for Cross Marketing with their small sample sizes, both the sex and ages of the sample were blanced. 50:50 male and female, and 20% in each age band from teens to fifties.

You may recall a previous survey I translated where the alarm feature was found to be the most-used function excluding the basics of voice and mail. I can’t say I use mine very much – only when I have something to do the same day and can’t be bothered making a full schedule entry. I don’t know for sure whether or not there is a snooze feature on my phone, but I suspect there is a key somewhere to press. Usually during the week I have a proper alarm clock, although more often than not I awake before it, but the weekends my wife sets mobile alarms for the both of us.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with Cross Marketing Inc, published the results of a survey into communication over the internet. They interviewed 300 computer users at the start of June regarding this question, with exactly half of the group of each sex. Similarly, teenagers made up 20.0% of the respondents, as did those in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties.

For me personally, as a bit reclusive, I’ve found blogging a great way of meeting people. I’ve made – well, I’ll not number them in case people start counting, but I’ve had a good few other contacts which I should follow up to make them into at least mail friends. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at the amount of positive postings and private mail I’ve received, but if you feel I’ve not been replying as much as you might expect (or just not at all!), I’ve got your mail on file and this blog really does eat up 90% of my home PC time, and I’m rather introverted about everything anyway, so sorry folks!
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japan.internet.com recently republished a report from Cross Marketing Inc on how people’s kanji ability has been affected by computers. They interviewed 300 people in the middle of June via a private internet questionnaire. Exactly half the sample was of each sex, and similarly exactly a sixth were in their teens (well, aged 18 or 19), a sixth in their twenties, and so on up to the sixties.

I’m not too surprised by the results of this survey. Informational programs on TV have occasionally mentioned how the wide availability of mobile phone email and the rich dictionaries within the handsets has encouraged people to convert more words to kanji, even those words that use characters outside the recommended set. In addition, with kanji more text can be crammed into a message than if things were spelt out fully in kana.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing Inc, published the results of research into personal computer maintenance. They interview 300 people, exactly 50:50 male and female, and exactly 20% aged 18 or 19, and 20% in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties.

I can’t say I regularly clean inside my PC, if at all, except to just blow dust out of the way when putting new bits in! I wonder if the virus scan option in Q2SQ includes a spyware check?
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