世論 What Japan Thinks

With much of Japan soon to be setting out on their New Year holidays, and the rest of Japan due to be kept updated every news bulletin on the traffic situation caused by the first group, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by goo Research into how people will be spending their New Year holidays, specifically regarding internet connectivity.

Demographics

Between the 17th and 20th of December 2007 1,083 members of the goo Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample was male, 17.7% in their teens, 19.9% in their twenties, 17.4% in their thirties, 17.6% in their forties, 16.6% in their fifties, and 10.6% aged sixty or older.

It may be useful to refer to a survey earlier this month on how long a New Year break people are having.

As I have no plans for travel, I cannot say what I plan to do, but if I were, I certainly wouldn’t bother taking a PC with me, but if it was available I would check my mail. Having said that, the last time I took an overnight stay, a couple of the free PCs in the lobby were loaded with slightly suspicious-looking applets in the icon tray, so I gave checking my email a miss just in case there was a keylogger installed on the machines.
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Last year I looked at a survey on influenza issues, but this year it’s a different kind of virus, the computer sort, that we look at in a survey conducted by goo Research into 60-79 year old computer users and security matters.

Demographics

Over the 6th and 7th of December 2007 613 members of the goo Research monitor panel were interviewed. 50.1% were female, 73.6% in their sixties, and 26.4% in the seventies.

One-click fraud is a type of fraud perhaps not unique to Japan, but Google doesn’t turn up any reports from other countries when searching in English. Basically the idea is that you get a spam, or click on a link somewhere and end up at the target page which suddenly tells you you’ve registered and need to pay a vast sum of money for monthly membership, or they’ll send the boys round. This seems to work well in Japan due to some combination of unwillingness of the victims to cause a fuss and weak consumer protection and other law enforcement. Actually, my wife ended up on somewhere similar after filling in details on a prize draw advertised through Chikyuu no Arukikata’s web site (Japan’s top independent traveller guide brand) and had to change email addresses due to 40-plus emails per day pestering her to join a dating site. I told her to complain to Chikyuu no Arukikata for betraying her trust, but even though she is quite expert at flame mails in other cases, she seemed reluctant for some reason I couldn’t deduce.
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It’s coming up to the new year, so naturally there are a number of New Year Postcard surveys coming out. This time it is japan.internet.com reporting on one by goo Research into nengajo, New Year Postcards – hey, wasn’t the last one also by goo Research?

Demographics

Over the 22nd and 23rd of November 2007 1,093 members of the goo Research online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.9% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

I ordered the first half of my New Year Cards last night, featuring Hello Kitty in a rat costume, of course. We bought from FujiFilm; if you are still to order, I’ve found an Amazon coupon for a discount on the basic price, free delivery and a 1,000 yen discount off your next order – we used a Cecile coupon, but it wasn’t as good value. Tonight we tried the second half using Kodak, but the web site is pretty useless and we found it impossible to check out and buy the cards!

Instead of the usual graph pictured at the top of the article I’ve got a picture of a mobile phone strap featuring a commemorative Year of the Rat Cat, Kitty chan herself. This can be ordered and delivered all around the world in time for the New Year from the internet’s finest vendor of… ack, you probably all know the sales pitch by heart by now; it’s just 420 yen from Strapya.

Finally, the kanji for the Year of Rat is 子, read as ko.
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With Kirin having previously announced a price rise in beer next February, and with Asahi today also making a similar announcement, it is timely to look at this survey conducted by goo Research in conjunction with the Yomiuri Shimbun into the rise in the price of beer.

Demographics

Little demographic information was given for this survey, bar that 1,092 people over the age of 20 were interviewed at the start of November 2007. Not even the sample sizes for the questions were listed!

It may be interesting to compare the results of this survey with a recent one on the rise in instant ramen prices.

One thing I’ve never understood is that comparable beers from all the three big brewers are the same price, and they are sold at almost the same price everywhere from the largest megastore to the smallest vending machine. Surely they cannot be running a cartel?

Note that currently a 350 millilitre can of beer retails for about 207 yen from a convenience store.
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With just a few days to go before the end of November, which means that for residents of Japan planning to send 年賀状, nengajou, New Year Cards for the Year of the Rat, this weekend is your last chance to get a discount for early orders. To see what the Japanese are planning to do this year, goo Research, in conjunction with the Yomiuri Shimbun, performed a survey on New Year Postcards. It may be instructive to look at last year’s survey on New Year Postcards to see how opinions have changed over the last year.

Demographics

Unfortunately little demographic information was reported, bar that the fieldwork was conducted towards the end of October, with 1,082 successful responses received.

For those of you in the USA, or in fact Japan, as they do ship internationally, wanting your own custom New Year cards (or Christmas cards, or any other occasion, may I recommend TinyPrints as a high-quality supplier of personalised stationery, with many card designs starting from just over a dollar per card. Note if you choose to order, enter the code WINTER07 for a 5% discount, expiring on the first of February 2008.

We’ll personally be ordering about 80 cards from 55 station this weekend, and even though the coming year is the Year of the Rat we’ll give Mickey Mouse a miss, instead getting a mix of Hello Kitty and Rilakkuma photo cards. Printing the address on the back of the cards will however be done ourselves at home. Although ordering cards seems expensive up front compared to home printing, once you budget for printer ink, losses due to paper jams, and other required user effort, it’s actually quite reasonable, and the print quality is considerably higher than a standard home ink jet.

Note that in Q1SQ1, the 8% who said they won’t print their New Year Postcards includes those buying pre-printed cards and writing addresses by hand, and those who handmake their own cards.
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Regardless of the headline above, there is of course always a difference between the rated speed and the actual speed that one achieves, and even though nearly two in five are on fiber-optic-based FTTH, often shared lines into apartments are capped at 10 Mbps per dwelling to help prevent one person hogging all the bandwidth. This was one of the findings from an article published on japan.internet.com reporting on a survey conducted by goo Research into the internet environment, with the column focusing on home connection speed in particular.

Demographics

Between the 16th and 18th of November 2007 1,098 members of the goo Research internet monitor group responded to a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.8% of the sample was male, 17.6% were in their teens, 19.3% in their twenties, 15.8% in their thirties, 17.1% in their forties, 18.3% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

I’m basically happy with my connection speed, and I blame any site slowness as much on the internet in general as on the last mile in particular.

Perhaps you are wondering what the average person does with this fat pipe, in particular are they running P2P programs. Well, it just so happens that just recently another survey was conducted on P2P software usage in Japan, which might provide an interesting point of cross-reference.
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I thought this suvey might have been better with a title like “Japanese cell phone strap usage”, but in the interests of truth in advertising, the headline you see gets straight to the point of this article! japan.internet reported on a recent survey conducted by goo Research into not buying cute cell phone straps from Japan but actually just mobile phone straps.

Demographics

Between the 2nd and 5th of November 2007 1,007 members of goo Research’s online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% were male, 18.1% in their teens, 20.2% in their twenties, 17.1% in their thirties, 17.0% in their forties, 16.9% in their fifties, and 10.8% aged sixty or older.

My own phone features straps featuring Monokuro Boo cubic pigs, a regional comedian, Hello Kitty (of course!), Miffy, Totoro, and a teddy bear. Really, I’m not making this up just to get you to buy cute cell phone straps from Japan.

Also note that the iPhone doesn’t have a eyelet to allow you to attach kawaii Japanese mobile phone straps to it, a mistake I think they must rectify to make it a success in Japan.

In the interests of disclosure, I ought to point out that this article may contain affiliate links, not that you couldn’t have guessed based on all the links trying to sell kawaii cell phone straps from Japan.
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Please feel free to select one of the two words in the headlines that fits your own personal bias. I’d love to see a Wikipedia-free Google, myself, or at least an option to exclude it from searches unless specifically asked for. However, I do know that my attitude towards Wikipedia is probably seen by many as elitist, but if you too are fed up with too much Wikipedia in your Google and you run a blog, please feel free to download my Wikipedia nofollow WordPress plugin. It works with Japanese Wikipedia too, but I’ve not noticed it being used on any Japanese sites.

The above serves as an introduction to a recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research entitled the fourth regular survey into Wikipedia and Wiki that they carry out every month.

Demographics

Between the 30th of October and the 2nd of November 2007 1,098 members of the goo Research online monitor pool successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.2% of the sample was male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, and 27.5% aged fifty or older.

I found the gripes listed in Q1SQ2 rather interesting; missing from the list above is one of my biggest gripes, that being that articles get too messy and should be reworked to remove duplicated information or to consolidate information. Another big issue, the ever-present trivia section, also didn’t feature. I’m not sure why people get worried about getting a virus from Wikipedia as there’s not really any way for that to happen. I was also surprised that so few mentioned grammar as a problem.
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With it being just about one full year since MNP, Mobile Number Portability, was introduced to Japan, japan.internet.com reported on goo Research’s 34th regular mobile phone upgrade needs survey, focusing on this MNP issue.

Demographics

Over the 15th and 16th of October 2007 exactly 1,000 mobile phone-using members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.5% of the sample was female, 1.8% in their teens, 19.3% in their twenties, 40.6% in their thirties, 24.2% in their forties, and 14.1% aged fifty or older.

Looking at the data from last year just before MNP was made available, around 18% said they would be interested in taking advantage of MNP, but Q2 shows that after a year less than 4% have actually done so. A similar question that may have been interesting to hear the answers to (or it may indeed have been asked, but not reported on) would be how many have changed provider but not used MNP.
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I omitted to translate an earlier, more detailed, survey on this topic, so instead you’ll have to make do with the highlights from an article published on japan.internet.com regarding a survey conducted by goo Research into disasters.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 22nd of October 2007 1,086 members of goo Research’s online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.1% were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.5% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 11.7% aged sixty or older.

Whilst we all hope that we don’t need it, there is always the risk of being hit by an earthquake, typhoon or other natural disaster in Japan. One important service offered by NTT is their Disaster Emergency Message Dial, basically an answering machine service that allows people to leave messages accessed through their home phone numbers. The linked site provides full English-language instructions on how to use it. Connected with this are the Broadband Disaster Message Board (web171), and the Mobile Disaster Message Boards, for DoCoMo, au, and SoftBank.

Note that the Broadband Disaster Message Board does not have an English version, which is pretty useless for relatives from overseas who might wish to check up on you, and, when you read the fine print at the bottom of the front page, you see that the recommended OSes are Windows 2000 SP4 and XP SP2, and the recommended broswers are Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0 only. Even better, you cannot interact with the buttons if you have JavaScript disabled, and the w3c validator dies trying to verify the code!

The final service is the Earthquake Early Warning system which detects a quake as soon as it happens, so if you live a little away from the epicentre you get a few seconds warning of the impending shock.
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