世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at the use of video sharing sites. 1,011 internet users from all over the country completed an online questionnaire; 57.5% of the sample were female, 24.2% in their twenties, 43.9% in their thirties, 23.0% in their forties, and 8.9% in their fifties.

YouTube is apparently a current hot topic of discussion, with over 2 million Japanese visitors reported. My main concern regarding these places is the copyright isssues, as there are many blatant rips of Japanese TV being uploaded, which is illegal regardless of any added value the uploader has attached, for example Lazer Ramon HG’s subtitled adventures!
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At the end of April, japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked into the usage of Social Bookmarking Services. They interviewed 1,069 people by means of an internet-based questionnaire. 43.2% of the sample was male, and the age breakdown was 2.6% in their teens, 21.6% in their twenties, 43.1% in their thirties, 24.4% in their forties, and 8.2% in their fifties.

I’ve used del.icio.us myself, but more as an attempted tool of promotion than as some sort of social affair. I get a very small amount of traffic (and in just one or two hits a day) from there and other services like furl and Technorati, although I do have a plan underway to get my own local tagging service up and running, perhaps this weekend.

Note that comparing figures with a survey last month on the state of RSS reader usage, although nearly four times as many people use RSS readers compared to social bookmarking services, round about a third of those interviewed in both surveys expressed a wish to use them in the future.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with goo Research, recently investigated the use of Social Networking Services, or SNS, in Japan. 1,087 members of the goo Research Monitors took part in the internet-based survey. 56.3% of the sample was female; 2.4% were in their teens, 22.9% in their twenties, 39.9% in their thirties, 24.8% in their forties, and 10.0% in their fifties. It may be instructive to compare the results here with those from an earlier survey of SNS that I translated in December.

総務省, soumushou, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, recently released figures that stated there were 7.16 million registered users of SNS (I’m not sure if people registered for two services are counted twice) at the end of March 2006; in the six months from September of 2005 the number of has increased by almost 80%! As well as users increasing, so are the services; in February Yahoo! opened up the beta version of Yahoo 360° and in March Rakuten introduced Rakuten Plaza Links.
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[part 1] [part 2]

goo Research recently conducted a survey to see what people thought about eating out. 2,195 people from the goo Research monitors answered a private internet survey. 48.6% of the sample was male, 18.1% were teenagers, 17.5% were in their twenties, 19.8% in their thirties, 21.5% in their forties, 17.0% in their fifties, 4.6% in their sixties, and 1.6% seventy years old or older.

Since this second half is about discount tokens, I’ll introduce probably about the best English-language discount coupon I know, for Hakkakuan in Daimaru, Osaka. I’ve used it twice, and depending on which staff you get, you get either both of the discounts or have to choose one. Get there just before 5pm and you can get an early dinner at lunchtime prices, including all you can eat silken tofu. Some of the set menus are all vegetarian. Next, whenever you eat out make sure to get a point card from the restaurant if they have one. Many places have such a scheme, and the discounts available amount to usually 5% to 10% off.
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[part 1] [part 2]

goo Research recently conducted a survey to see what people thought about eating out. 2,195 people from the goo Research monitors answered a private internet survey. 48.6% of the sample was male, 18.1% were teenagers, 17.5% were in their twenties, 19.8% in their thirties, 21.5% in their forties, 17.0% in their fifties, 4.6% in their sixties, and 1.6% seventy years old or older.

For me, lunchtime is usually bread from a local bread shop; we have a subsidised canteen, but I have never got used to slurping, and I dislike the school lunch atmosphere of the place! I would personally define my special meals out as either work parties or, if it is with wifey, going out explicitly to eat and spending more than 2,000 yen each, which would put me in the four to five times a year bracket or so. One nice place for special meals is 梅の花, Ume no Hana, “Plum Blossom”, a posh tofu place. The one in Kobe Motomachi (and that part of Kobe has a lovely collection of old solid stone buildings, rather a rarity in Japan) has excellent views over the harbour and mountains, and the private rooms make for a wonderful date!
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, recently carried out their eighth regular survey on internet tool usage. They interviewed by means of an internet-based questionnaire 1,071 (the text says 1,071, but later calculations suggest that the sample size is actually 1,037; 1,071 seems to have been the sample size for the previous survey!) people from all over Japan towards the end of March. The sample consisted of 56.0% female, and the age breakdown was 2.7% in their teens, 23.8% in their twenties, 39.3% in their thirties, 22.6% in their forties, 9.2% in their fifties, and 2.3% sixty or older.

I have previously translated their fifth survey on tools, and in these four months the percentage of RSS reader users has climbed just 1.5 percentage points, or an increase of around 10% in four months. Although this seems like a significant relative increase, looking at the reasons why people do not use them the top answer was that people see little need for them. I also saw little need to begin with, but once I started using one I wondered why I hadn’t begun earlier. I subscribe mostly to blogs that update once every day or so; higher-frequency news sites give too much information, I feel, and using filtering might cause me to miss stuff, so I just use bookmarks for my news requirements.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with goo Research, carried out an online poll amongst the goo Research Monitors to find out what they thought about Wikipedia. They surveyed 1,060 people, 55.6% female, over a few days at the start of April. The age demographics were 24.6% in their twenties, 43.7% in their thirties, 23.7% in their forties, and 8.0% in their fifties.

I personally only trust Wikipedia to a small degree; to be honest, I can only fully trust articles I know myself to be correct, I trust items on non-controversial subjects to a lesser degree, so I suppose that makes me one of those who doesn’t really trust it. I edited the Takarazuka Theatre article, for instance, but I have seen some of my information removed, and now the article is descending into trivia, bad writing, and inconsistent information – I can see at least two mistakes in a quick scan. Controversial subjects are the least trustworthy, as the alleged “neutral point of view” ends up as being given to either the side who shouted first or loudest, or has the most friends in high places. As with a lot of Open Source, everyone wants to stamp their mark, but few want to just fix other’s stuff, and even if they do, they often unwittingly trample on the ego of those who want their information preserved.

A good example of the above is Japanese Name. This needs a complete rewrite, as the same information is repeated twice or even thrice, there is trivia galore, showing off (some valid, some invalid), falsehoods and slack wording.
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With stories about the dangers of Winny flying around, japan.internet.com jumped on the bandwagon (see my previous stories on Winny usage and the greatest security threats of 2005), publishing a survey carried out in conjuction with goo Research to find out about people’s use of file sharing software. They interviewed 1,071 people from their internet monitor group. 41.6% of the respondents were male, 23.2% in their twenties, 44.1% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, and 7.5% in their fifties.

This survey talks about confidential data leakage due to Winny viruses, but I have not seen any information that confirms it is due to viruses, and not just down to people sharing their whole hard disk or the like.

I did once or twice use Winny, but gave up as first the download rate was unbelievably slow, second the selection of material was pretty poor (or my understanding of Japanese was), and third it was, as is much Japanese user interface design, incredibly cluttered and unintuitive for me to use.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at the perception of online DVD rental. They interviewed 1,061 people from their monitor group at the start of March by means of an internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 43.3% male, with 25.0% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 24.5% in their forties, and 9.0% in their fifties.

I haven’t rented a DVD since I got married, although perhaps before I did I might have investigated one of these companies, as I heard a bit about NetFlix from USA residents, and my local Tsutaya had a pretty thin collection of DVDs. Now, I don’t have enough time to even just catch up with what we record off cable! However, if I could find a cheap portable player – about Nintendo DS size with one face all screen, and an SD memory card slot – I’d snap one up in an instant for viewing on the train. The PSP and its UMD just look a bit too bulky and perhaps battery-hungry for my needs. I’d love to catch up on Monkey, both the original and the new versions, for instance.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, interviewed at the start of this month by means of a web-based survey 1,094 people from all over the country to find out about how they use USB flash memory, as well as other issues surrounding moving data between PCs. 55.6% of the respondents were female, and 2.7% were teenaged, 21.9% in their twneties, 42.2% in their thirties, 22.9% in their forties, 8.3% in their fifties, and just 1.8% sixty or older.

Last year they also carried out a similar survey, so there will be some extra information about how the marketplace has changed in just a year.

I personally prefer flash memory (SD cards, in fact) as the quickest and easiest way, assuming I can fit all the data on the card. Burning CDs is just a pain and not reusable, and my floppy drive only ever sees action as a boot device for Linux! I also have a Sony NW-A300 hard drive player handy, but the lack of spare USB cables limits its usefulness as a transfer device.
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