世論 What Japan Thinks

goo Research recently published the results of a survey they conducted into people’s plans for holidays this year. Over five days in the middle of January 1,082 people from their online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire.

Demographics

The sample was 49.9% male, with 21.0% in their twenties, 18.8% in their thirties, 21.5% in their forties, 17.6% in their fifties, and 21.1% aged sixty or older. It’s good to see a large sample of older people, as I suspect that retired people travel disproportionately often.

I’m off to Europe too this summer, but I’m not sure what will happen regarding the blog; perhaps I’ll just stick it on autopilot summarising or reposting last year’s news? I have zero intention of blogging from abroad, and I doubt if I’ll even bother reading my mail. For domestic travel, I’d love to know how many people plan spending a night in their home prefecture. Wifey and I spend a night a few times a year in Kobe and Osaka (at a proper hotel, not the by-the-hour type!) for no particular reason other than we get a good offer, with both cities within 40 minutes travel time from home. In fact, last month we stayed at Hotel Piena in Kobe on a full board including five course room service deal with quite amazingly good food, especially considering they whipped up some veggie dishes for me at very short notice. We had a small complaint about noise from upstairs, and the manager sent me a nice letter of apology and three 20% off discount tickets!
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goo Research recently published the results of a survey conducted amongst a slightly different population from usual, that of elementary school children, on the subject of what they do after school. The fieldwork was conducted over two weeks from the 24th of October to the 7th of November last year, with respondents gathered via a public web-based survey from users of the primary school children-targeted portal site kids goo. There is no mention of parental involvement in the data collection. I presented another survey last year on a similar topic, but that time it was the parents interviewed regarding their children and their extra-curricular lessons.

Demographics

1,500 children completed the survey successfully. 60.1% were girls, 2.9% were in the first year of elementary school (age 6 or 7), 5.5% in second year, 13.7% in third year, 22.9% in forth year, 27.7% in fifth year, and 27.4% in sixth year.

The most surprising thing to me is probably Q2, with not more than 3% met at the school gates by their parents. This to me is a great figure, as it indicates the relative low level of parental paranoia in the country, and of course the lack of cars associated with the school run is good for the environment.
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goo Research recently published the results of a survey they conducted into the matter of university lectures being made publicly available, or OpenCourseWare to use 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, who have their own OpenCourseWare, including a small English section.

Demographics

The fieldwork was conducted between the 13th and 19th of December last year, with 1,050 people from their monitor group successfully completing a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, 19.8% in their teens, 20.1% in their twenties, 19.5% in their thirties, 20.2% in their forties, and 20.4% aged fifty or older. Educationally, 6.1% had only completed middle school (although some of the teenage sample may not have finished high school yet), 26.8% graduated from high school, 8.8% vocational schools, 1.6% 高専 college (this type of college is seems to be a variant of vocational schooling?), 11.3% junior (two-year) college, 26.2% university arts course, 13.1% university science, 1.6% university medical or pharmacy, 3.4% post-graduate or business schools, 0.5% overseas university or post-graduate, and 0.6% other.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted by goo Research into
awareness and use of Second Life. Over three days in the middle of February 1,073 people from goo Research’s online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Demographically, 51.5% were male, 13.0% in their teens, 23.1% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 21.4% in their forties, and 20.8% in their fifties. Note that at the time of the survey there is no Japanese language version of Second Life, and I am unsure as to even how well it supports Japanese language, but the launch of a fully localised version is not far off at all, it seems.

I get most of my information regarding Second Life from first The Register (possibly NSFW material) and second Something Awful (definitely NSFW!), so my view of it is, shall we say, rather skewed. I have no intention of taking part myself, as I’ve never been much for socialising in my First Life, let alone the Second. Quite frankly it all sounds too scary!

Coincidentaly, I also got my very first Japanese Second Life spam last night advertising the chance to meet some bored housewives for virtual rumpy-pumpy in a virtual manshon. The advertisement featured photographs of real-life women and a real-life block of flats, which seemed rather much like it was designed to entice you into the real world via the virtual.
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japan.internet.com published the results of a survey conducted by goo Research into what brands people associate with internet services. Over three days at the start of February 1,083 people from their monitor group successfully completed a private online questionnaire. The male-female split was half-and-half to three significant digits; there was one more male than female respondent. 13.5% were in their teens, 11.5% in their twenties, 14.9% in their thirties, 18.2% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 22.0% in their sixties.

On a statistical note, recently goo Research’s samples seem to be more balanced both sex and age-wise; they used to be around 55:45 male to female and biased towards the thirties age group, but this is the second time recently I’ve noticed a more balanced age spread.

I reported on a similar survey conducted this time last year, so it may be instructive to cross-reference. Google has surpassed Yahoo! for search; this trend is also visible, but not so strongly, in actual search engine use. Regarding shopping, Rakuten Marketplace retains their huge lead over Amazon, perhaps due in part to their bordering-on-spam use (abuse!) that they make of your mail address, one reason I will never shop there. They do not have a one-click unsubscribe option, and they freely share your mail address between all the shops there. Even if you just use the Y-Not! free email greeting card service that they bought out last year, they automatically subscribe you to their system and pass the address on to their shops. You have been warned!
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Over two days back in October last year, goo Research interviewed 2,215 members of its business monitor community regarding office design issues. The particular aspect of office design that they were interested in is what might be called “functional design”, namely design with the aim of improving employee motivation or communication, or other such positive effects. The sample consisted of 14.5% in their twenties, 40.5% in their thirties, 32.5% in their forties, 10.7% in their fifties, 1.6% in their sixties, and 0.1% aged seventy or older.

Regarding employment status, 8.9% were at board level, 77.3% were regular full-time employees, 2.3% contract full-time employees, 1.5% were short-term contractors, and 10.0% had other status. 8.2% were in real estate, 23.9% in manufacture, 4.7% in finance and insurance, 6.1% in distribution, 1.3% in utilities, 5.3% in import/export, 22.8% in the service sector, 8.6% in the public sector, and 19.0% in other industries. 18.6% worked in companies or between 1 and 9 employees, 13.5% in those between 10 and 49 employees, 8.1% with 50 to 99 employees, 19.4% with 100 to 499 employees, 8.0% with 500 to 999 employees, and 32.4% in companies with 1,000 or more employees. The sex breakdown is not given, however.

My office is a pretty typical Japanese office; open plan with token partitions that barely hide you from other members, although looking around other parts of the building we have it lucky in having even just these token walls. I find that the offices are exceptionally noisy, as people just shout across the place, and sadly I dislike headphones of ear buds, so cannot get much respite from the din.
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japan.internet.com reported on goo Research’s 13th monthly RSS usage survey. Over four days at the end of January and start of February they interviewed 1,078 members of their internet monitor group. The demographics were 52.9% male, 15.7% in their teens, 19.8% in their twenties, 18.2% in their thirties, 17.4% in their forties, 16.8% in their fifties, and 11.2% in their sixties.

Although the number of people who have used RSS readers has increased slightly since the last survey, the actual numbers of active users has actually decreased by about 1.6 percentage points. The reasons for this change are not discussed within the presented results, although this could just be an insignificant statistical fluctuation.

As for visiting sites that are in my reader, as most of them are blogs I do tend to often visit, as I may want to follow the comments. I do in fact subscribe to the comment RSS feeds of my most favourite site, but will always click through when I see an interesting comment just so I can see it in context.
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A couple of weeks ago japan.internet.com published the results of goo Research’s 29th monthly survey into mobile phone upgrade needs. Over three days at the start of January exactly 1,000 members of their monitor panel (presumably all mobile phone owners) successfully completed a private internet-based survey. 53.0% of the sample was female, 2.1% in their teens, 19.7% in their twenties, 39.0% in their thirties, 25.1% in their forties, and 14.1% aged fifty or older.

Just yesterday, my wife upgraded her phone – what sold the Panasonic P703i to her even more than the pink colouring (actually, she bought the wavey blue one) was the inclusion of Lisa and Gaspard icon sets.
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With the recent kerfuffle in the news about the impending closure of 2 channel, or at least the threat of a forced seizure of the domain name, or perhaps just business as usual, japan.internet.com reported on goo Research’s survey into what people thought about the rumoured closing down. Between the 19th and 21st of January they interviewed 1,059 people from their monitor group. 51.9% were male, 26.9% in their twenties, 25.1% in their thirties, 24.6% in their forties, and 23.4% in their fifties.

Note that a previous survey showed that 56% of a sample of mainly business professionals have visited there, so I would have through that there might have been a stronger showing of people with definite opinions about the news, especially considering that over three quarters of the total population have visited the site, and just 4% have not heard anything about it. Also note that as far as I can see, neither my blog nor my name appears on that site, but I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad sign!
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[part 1] [part 2]

Last weekend goo Research, in conjunction with Yomiuri Weekly, released the results of a survey into what people thought the coming year may bring. For a week spanning the end of November and the start of December 11,648 members of goo’s online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.2% of the respondents were male, 5.9% in their teens, 18.9% in their twenties, 29.9% in their thirties, 21.5% in their forties, 11.9% in their fifties and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

Q7 is interesting in that the more negative effects of the flood of retiring baby boomers seem to be more in people’s mind than the positive benefits.

Note that there was an extra question in the survey regarding people’s favourite female “announcers” (Japanese uses that English word, but their role is more like an MC or an MC’s assistant, or even just a TV personality), but I find the obsession slightly – I can’t really think of a suitable word, but their role seems to be to smile prettily, be demure, then get married off to a sports personality once they approach their television sell-by date. Therefore, I’ll skip that question.
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