世論 What Japan Thinks

With only seven months to go from the date of this survey before the plug is pulled (perhaps) on analogue broadcasts, goo Research took their 17th regular look at terrestrial digital television. The survey results were published by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 13th and 16th of December 2010 1,097 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 11.9% aged sixty or older.

I’m all ready now, having got my Panasonic VIERA TC-P42G25 42-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV (Amazon affiliate link) installed two days before Christmas. The data channel is well done, and as we enter our postcode when setting up the local weather for the town appears by default. I’ll not be bothering with the AcTVila feature, however, and given this report on hacking tellies (it’s either a Panasonic or a Samsung they analysed) I’ll be keeping it offline for the foreseeable future.

Note that although analogue broadcast is supposed to finish on the 24th of July this year, I’ve heard the cable companies may be asked to continue to carry it, and today’s news said that television stations may also decide to keep broadcasting in analogue.
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Just in time for the New Year nengajo postcard season, goo Research performed a survey, reported on by japan.internet.com, into that subject, with the report focusing on a service from mixi, Japan’s largest SNS, that allows people to send physical postcards to virtual friends, while maintaining the pseudo-anonymity of people’s online handles.

Demographics

Over the 7th and 8th of December 2010 1,098 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.8% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

Since Facebook doesn’t offer such a service for Christmas cards (as far as I know), I can conclude that either such a degree of privacy is of no great concern to the average Facebook user or that the average user has no urge to send cards to their Facebook friends. Perhaps it might be more of the second, as surveys have found that Japanese have a significantly lower number of social network friends, indicating that they are more discerning about who they befriend.

Q3 is a quite surprising result from my point of view; note that the question refers to disclosing your address to mixi only, not to your contacts on the SNS, yet 70% don’t feel too happy about doing so.
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Rice has the image as the main staple of the Japanese dining table, so this recent survey from goo Research looked at rice and eating habits to find out the truth behind the stereotype.

Demographic

Between the 15th and 18th of November 2010 1,295 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.1% of the sample were female, 16.4% in their teens, 16.8% in their twenties, 16.3% in their thirties, 16.8% in their forties, 16.8% in their fifties, and 16.8% aged sixty or older.

We buy all our rice these days over the internet, and usually a different brand or region every time; we’re currently on Shiga rice of a brand whose name I couldn’t read. We sometimes pick up brown rice or brown rice blends, which makes a change from sometimes quite bland white rice.

However, if you think Japanese rice is bland, may I suggest getting a new rice cooker? We recently replaced our old one which cooked everything into a glutenous mulch, but now with the new one each grain remains distinct and much more pleasent on my tastebuds. I still miss Basmati, however…

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Although there is still some time for the Eco Point award system for digital televisions, air conditioners and refrigerators to run, from the start of this month the points have been halved, so now seemed a good time for goo Research to take a look at what people thought of the scheme, in a survey reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

From the 3rd to 6th of December 2010 1,089 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.4% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

I think the scheme has been effective from a financial point of view, prising open Japanese wallets to get some money circulating. From an environmental point of view, it will help reduce household electricity consumption by replacing old inefficient equipment, but looking at the overall carbon cycle there’s less of a clear benefit. For my part, we upgraded our 28 inch CRT television to a 42 inch plasma, but looking at the power consumption the old one was rated at around 200 watts but the new one is 330 watts. Oops.

If they want new products to promote, I’d like to see fluorescent and LED light bulbs being chosen, as lighting uses more that televisions or fridges, and none of the current Eco Point products can compare to the savings from LED.
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goo Research recently conducted their thirteenth regular survey into internet advertising, with japan.internet.com reporting on the results.

h3>Demographics
Between the 19th and 22nd of November 2010 1,036 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.8% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 15.9% in their forties, and 27.6% aged fifty or older.

To try to catch the third of you who click on contextual affiliate adverts, I’ll mention that if you are running under Windows AdMuncher by Murray Hurps is an excellent blocker for 99% of all advertisements and works with any browser. It’s not free, but it’s great value and might even pay for itself if you surf using a 3G connection. It’s blocked about 200 adverts a day on my netbook, and makes for a much more pleasant experience as valuable screen space isn’t consumed by huge adverts. Once again, buy AdMuncher by Murray Hurps through this link and help out What Japan Thinks!
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This survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, was their regular look at keitai (mobile phone) novels, a genre of writing designed to be read on a mobile phone, and often written on them too. Common features include short sentences, paragraphs and chapters, and a casual writing style featuring emoticons and graphical emoji icons. This is the 7th time this approximately bi-monthly survey has been conducted; the sixth survey translation is here for reference.

Demographics

Between the 26th and 30th of November 2010 1,087 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.3% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

Unfortunately, the article just notes the halt in the rise of smartphone readers of keitai novels without any analysis. I don’t really have any insights either, so any conjecture would be a pure guess, so I’ll refrain from making one.
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I haven’t seen any statistics on browser use in Japan for a while, so I was glad to get this data from goo Research via japan.internet.com on browsers.

Demographics

Between the 25th and 17th of November 2010 1,091 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.1% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.4% aged sixty or older.

Looking at worldwide statistics on browser usage Internet Explorer is on 52%, Firefox on 26% and Chrome on 11%, but these figures are based on actual page views, so it’s difficult to make a direct comparison. I was also suprised to see that only 13% here have a recommended browser at work or school, although some people might have locked-down PCs so they cannot actually make a change themselves.

You’ll note that this survey was collected on the web, yet 6.4% of the sample (70 people) said they knew what a browser was but didn’t use one… Just as well that they were eliminated from the follow-up question!
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With Skype already available on many smartphone, and indeed with Japan’s second-largest carrier, au, now preloading it onto many phones, this survey from goo Research looks at awareness of Skype and other associated issues.

Demographics

Between the 12th and 17th of November 2010 1,070 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.2% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.8% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.4% in their fifties, and 12.2% aged sixty or older.

In Q2, I’m not sure if people were fully aware that Skype to Skype may be free (excluding packet charges), but Skype to non-Skype mobile phones requires payment. Furthermore, in Japan public wireless is rather thin on the ground, so even if the majority of mobile phones in Japan have it installed, calls are still going to have to be paid for more often than not.
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Recently goo Research published the results of a survey into internet usage by elementary school children in Japan.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 11th of October 2010 13,925 members of the goo Research monitor panel who were guardians of children of elementary school age completed a private internet-based questionnaire. No demographic information on the children was supplied, but the adults were 54.4% female, 1.1% in their twenties, 40.8% in their thirties, 53.2% in their forties, and 4.8% aged fifty or older. It is also not clear how guardians with multiple children completed the survey.

At least most of the children seem to be well-policed regarding their internet use, with the majority spending less than an hour online a week, and email and chat being less frequent activities.
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An interesting survey from goo Research, conducted in conjunction with President magazine, looked at time management, and this extract highlighted the differences in habits between the rich (over 15 million per year salary) and the average (between 4 and 5 million per year).

Demographics

There was little demographic information, just that there were 311 people in each of the two salary ranges, all of them business people.

I’m a “not at all” for four of them, and a “very much so” for Q4 if writing for the blog qualifies doing something productive while commuting
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