世論 What Japan Thinks

Following on from the recent survey on dirty Japanese DVDs (which for some reason got great click-through rates from Japan Probe and News on Japan), this time let’s look at a survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research into the matter of faults with devices with internal hard disk drives. Note that despite the headline, this survey covers any problem with devices with hard disks, not just the disk drives themselves.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 8th of February 2008 1,092 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.9% of the sample was male, 17.8% in their teens, 19.4% in their twenties, 15.8% in their thirties, 16.9% in their forties, 18.3% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

I’ve had a hard disk in my PC die once, but luckily I managed to salvage about 90% of the critical information, and since then I’ve been slightly better at performing backups, although with a mere CD-R, backing up a one gigabyte SD card’s-worth of photos is a bit of a pain.
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One popular survey from last year was a survey into what Japan thinks of OpenCourseWare, freely available university material. Recently, goo Research released the results of their second annual survey into these matters, namely making university lectures publicly available.

Demographics

The fieldwork for this survey was conducted between the 13th and 19th of December 2007, with 1,000 members of the goo Research monitor group completing a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, with 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% aged fifty or older. By educational history, 7.1% had only completed middle school (although given that 20.0% were in their teens, some may still be in high school), 27.5% high school, 10.8% vocational or other types of secondary schooling, 9.5% junior two-year college, 25.6% university arts course, 12.8% university science, 1.2% university medical or pharmacutical, 3.4% post-graduate or business school, 0.4% overseas university or post-graduate, and 1.2% other.

OpenCourseWare is the term coined to describe this phemonenom, pioneered in the USA by MIT’s OpenCourseWare project. In Japan there is the Japan OpenCourseWare Consortium, JOCW, based at Keio University.

Note that since the last survey it appears that Tokyo Geijutsu University and Hitotsubashi University have stopped offering OpenCourseWare, but Doshisha University, Ritsumeikan University, Kansai University, Kyoto Seika University, and Kagawa Education Institute of Nutrition have started.
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With a story last week about cigarette smoke clogging up the laser on the Wii, this is a timely survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research into faulty DVD playback devices.

Demographics

Between the 31st of January and 1st of February 2008 1,095 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.9% were male, 17.5% in their teens, 19.4% in their twenties, 15.9% in their thirties, 17.0% in their forties, 18.4% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

As I only own less than half a dozen DVDs and haven’t watched any of them for months if not years, I can’t say I’ve ever had a problem with DVDs.

Oh, and if you’re coming here via a Google search for the keywords in the article title, sorry to disappoint you!
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As the second part of the survey published on Saturday into English study, this is a recent poll conducted by goo Research in conjuction with the Yomiuri Shimbun as part of their 13th Topi-Q Net survey into the matter of objectives for 2008.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 25th of December 2007 549 young members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sex ratio was reported as 1:1 male to female, but there obviously was one odd person left over. The ages of the respondents ranged between teens to thirties, although the exact split is not reported. 40% of the sample were students in either secondary or tertiary education, 28% were full-time employees, and 12% homemakers, with the other 20% presumably made up of part-timers, NEETs, etc.

It’s a bit depressing, I suppose, than in Q1SQ1 only one in ten is going to make 2008 the year of love, with far more people likely to have their nose stuck in a book rather than anywhere else. At least, however, there was a decent degree of positive reflection on the year past, with almost half rating the past year at 70 out of 100 or more.
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Unfortunately I couldn’t find any suitably silly survey for Sunday, so you’ll have to make do with this one, where japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted by goo Research into the topic of broken digital cameras.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 21st of January 2008 1,092 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.2% of the sample was male, 16.2% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.8% in their fifties, and 12.2% aged sixty or older.

Picture of a broken Panasonic DMC-FX30 by Jeff Youngstrom

I am always amazed at quite how high the desire to learn English is in Japan, as despite at least 5 years in school ability levels are pretty atrocious on the whole, and even given Nova’s demise there seems to be no fall-off in the popularity of study. This recent poll conducted by goo Research in conjuction with the Yomiuri Shimbun as part of their 13th Topi-Q Net survey into the matter of English showed youth keen to learn more.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 25th of December 2007 549 young members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sex ratio was reported as 1:1 male to female, but there obviously was one odd person left over. The ages of the respondents ranged between teens to thirties, although the exact split is not reported. 40% of the sample were students in either secondary or tertiary education, 28% were full-time employees, and 12% homemakers, with the other 20% presumably made up of part-timers, NEETs, etc.

In Q1SQ, I thought it interesting that it was chance encounters with foreigners in the street or on holiday that was more of a reason to learn English when compared to other situations such as communicating better with foreign friends or dare I suggest looking for an exotic partner. I’ll also throw Q2 back at my readers.

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With the recent news that KDDI was tops for net new customers in 2007, it is instructive to look at a recent report on japan.internet.com regarding the 35th regular mobile phone upgrade needs survey conducted by goo Research once a month, every month since April 2004.

Demographics

Over the 20th and 21st of December 2007 exactly 1,000 members of the goo Research monitor group who carried a mobile phone (the reported text says just internet users, but everyone in the survey carried a mobile phone, so the sample must have been pre-screened for mobile phone ownership) completed a private online questionnaire. 50.8% of the sample was male, 1.2% in their teens, 15.8% in their twenties, 37.4% in their thirties, 28.8% in their forties, and 16.8% aged fifty or older.

With the hype for Apple’s iPhone release in Japan beginning to build up, it is interesting to note that from the list of desired features in Q2, the following are not present on the US or Europe models of that device: external memory card, one seg digital terrestrial or analogue television, infra-red, FeliCa (Osaifu Keitai, electronic wallet), water resistance, GPS, FM, AM or digital radio, document viewer, skinning, and an electronic compass. Present are merely music playback, full browser, Bluetooth, and wireless LAN. Of course, one can argue that the questions were biased towards Japanese phones, but Apple will have to face the same issue of customer bias when they try to sell the iPhone in Japan. However, in Q4 people seem to hold the screen display as key, an area where the iPhone is strong.
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Although the 福袋, Fukubukuro – New Year Lucky Bag sale – season is almost over, surveys on this matter are still a little behind the times; such as this one reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research into fukubukuro.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 25th of December 2007 1,186 members of goo Research’s online monitor panel successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample was male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.2% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 15.9% in their fifties, and 12.2% aged sixty or older.

If you want to try a Fukubukuro for yourself, there are still (I hope!) a few Hello Kitty phone strap bags left. Get them now or regret it forever.

Although I did say earlier that I planned to buy a Mister Donut Fukubukuro, the first day I wanted to buy we ended up eating in Mister Donut instead, and the second day the shop we went to had finished their sales for the year when we arrived. To top it all, my Misdo point card also expired so we missed out on a Pon De Lion cuddly toy.

Finally, Shari, I am still looking out for a survey on Fukubukuro satisfaction levels!
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Perhaps this Christmas many children in both Japan and the rest of the world found a mobile phone in their stockings. To see how elementary school-aged children view their phones, goo Research released on Christmas day the results of a survey of users of Kids goo (goo’s child-targeted portal) on children’s use of mobile phones.

Demographics

Between the 9th and 26th of November 2007 1,100 elementary school-aged users of the Kids goo portal completed a public survey available through the web site. 60.0% were girls, 3.7% in first year of elementary school, 4.8% in second year of elementary school, 7.7% in third year of elementary school, 20.0% in fourth year of elementary school, 28.9% in fifth year of elementary school, and 34.9% in sixth year of elementary school.

In Q6, it’s interesting to see the differences between the sexes; boys have significantly less contact with friends through mobile phones. The reasons for this would be fascinating to investigate further; is it that girls are more sociable with their friends, or do boys prefer to meet in person, or is there another driving force behind the differences?

In Q7 I’m really surprised that 45% of the mobile phone using children have basically no parent-enforced usage rules. I would hope that the parent has set up limits with the service provider such as blocking potentially harmful sites or even turning off internet access altogether, and other limits such as not allowing them to make any payments for site access or content download.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on another of these fascinating (for suitable values of fascinating) snippets of Japanese consumer behaviour as uncovered by a survey conducted by goo Research into digital cameras, focusing on camera modes in particular.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 9th of December 2007 1,097 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.7% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

I use my digital camera in full auto, full silent mode on the whole, but I’ve tweaked the quality down to perhaps medium level; 3 mega-pixels instead of 5 mega-pixels, but high quality mode to try to save a bit of space on the memory cards, although having both a 1 gigabyte and a 512 megabyte card makes this a rather academic exercise. One of the answers for Q2 mentions “Scene Mode”; many cameras have multiple modes for specific situations, not just night, scenery and flash modes, but also close-up, food, baby and I think even pet mode too, although I haven’t studied my instruction manual in sufficient depth to work out what they all do, so just leaving it in auto mode covers 95% of the situations sufficiently.
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