世論 What Japan Thinks

infoPLANT recently carried out a survey into how people used their DoCoMo mobile phone’s default screen display. Over a week at the start of April they interviewed 6,358 people, 65.8% of them female, by means of a self-selecting survey from the iMode main menu.

Note that on the newer models of phones, not just a static wallpaper may be used, but also animations or applets may be set to run on the default display. The Japanese word 待ち受け画面, machiuke gamen is used to describe the wallpaper feature that this survey is concerned with. It refers to the display that appears after the phone has been idle for a few seconds, or perhaps when the phone is woken from sleep mode but before going to menu mode.

My own phone usually has seasonal Pinky pictures with calendar overlay.
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Before I start, let me say that all astrology is bunk. However, it is in Japan, like everywhere else, big business with frauds highly-talented (at extracting money from gullible individuals) people like Guinness Book of Records best-selling author in her category, the awful Kazuko Hosoki, or the Feng Shui (pronounced to rhyme with “load of old hooie”) “Dr” Copa who will sell you cheap plastic yellow tat guaranteed to increase his your wealth. Oooh, and don’t get me started on blood types!

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There, I feel better now. infoPLANT recently had an open survey available for one week through an iMode menu on the topic of fortunes. As with all the other infoPLANT surveys, the self-selecting nature of it will bias the sample towards heavy iMode users. Over one week in the middle of March, 6,031 people, 32.9% male, completed the mobile web-based questionnaire. I will use the term “horoscope” in this translation to cover all the various types of fortune-telling that the Japanese word 占い, uranai, covers.
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infoPLANT recently released a survey, performed using their usual method of a menu option within the DoCoMo iMode service, to find out what people thought about beer, happoshu and third-sector beer. Note that this survey was self-selecting, but since it has nothing to do with mobile phones, there should not be too major a problem with the survey population this time. 7,668 people, 61.0% female, responded to the survey, conducted over one week at the end of February.

Beer almost always means lager in Japan, happoshu is a low-malt beer-like drink(can’t stand the stuff myself), and third-sector beer is wheat and malt free, and instead is made from pea and other vegetable proteins and the one time I drunk it it tasted suprisingly nice and smooth.

I think I have found one statistic I’ve been seeking for a long time – here we have 13.8% of men in their twenties reporting daily beer consumption. Looking at a table from my homeland of Scotland, we can see that in 1998 only 7% of males aged 25 to 34 drunk any alcohol daily. However, looking at those men who drink at least once a week, the Scots have a significantly higher figure, although remember that includes all alcohol types. Similarly, but even more markedly, a mere 3% of young Scotswomen drink any alcohol daily, whereas over three times as many, 10.1% of Japanese women in their twenties consume beer daily. These differences are repeated across all the age groups.

Contrasting the daily figures with the weekly ones, I think it is a fair conclusion to draw that whilst the Japanese may overall have a lower frequency of alcohol consumption than the Scots, there are a higher number of regular drinkers amongst the Japanese population.

Note that neither survey addresses the volume of consumption, but with the recommended maximum weekly intake of 21 units for men and 14 for women, two large half-litre cans for men or two small 330 ml cans for women of beer-like drinks will most likely put the daily drinkers over the safe limit, and that ignores any other alcohol the Japanese may be consuming. Taking the adult population of Japan to be about 103 million and taking 18.6% of that figure we get the tabloid headline figure above, which does make certain assumptions, of course, some that might make the figure lower and others that make it higher.
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During one week towards the end of January infoPLANT carried out a survey, via their usual means of an option in the DoCoMo iMode menuing system, of 7,977 people from all over the country, 63.5% female, to find out their opinions regarding televisions.

Looking at the results, it seems that most people go to shops to get televisions sold to them; the in-store information is the most important reference for most people, and display quality and price are what makes the deal, both these factors being ones that the salespeople are more than able to convey face-to-face.
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infoPLANT carried out a survey over a week at the end of January to find out what people thought regarding pre-cooked frozen foodstuffs. From the explanations within, this covers a wide spectrum covering both complete meals and individual side dishes. I do not believe that chilled foods are covered by this survey.

A self-selecting sample of 8,578 people, 66.4% female, completed a survey presented through the DoCoMo iMode menuing system. 3% were in their teens, 37% in their twenties, 43% in their thirties, 16% in their forties, and just 2% fifty or older.

This is probably about the most dull survey I have ever translated, so I apologise for that!

Notice that over four in five chose taste as the most important factor, whilst only a quarter stated taste as a reason for using them, suggesting that Japanese consumers are not particularly impressed by the taste of their frozen foods.

In Q2 it was seen that the over fifty group tended more to buy in bulk, and that is reflected in this question where the same demographic noted the highest importance in the best before date. Over fifty year old women also recorded the highest percentage in the safety, maker or brand image, and preparation method questions.
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infoPLANT surveyed 6,128 users of DoCoMo iMode phones in mid-January by means of a questionnaire available through a publically-accessible iMode menu option regarding people’s views on matters relating to stocks and shares. The sample replying to this survey was 62.1% female, with 3.1% teenaged, 38.9% in their twenties, 41.9% in their thirties, 14.0% in their forties, and just 2% aged 50 or over.

Note that some of the raw data that I have translated looked a bit dodgy, so I cannot vouch for the quality of this survey as there may very well be errors in the raw data in addition to any biases in the survey methodology. I note that those with no interest in shares tend to select the “Other” option to the second and third question, which suggests perhaps there needs to be new services dreamed up to engage those disinterested, but on the other hand it probably means that it was just the default option people had to select to complete the form, as there was no “Not interested” answer available!
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japan.internet.com recently published a short survey on the usage of internet tools at home. There is a fuller survey report available at a price. They interviewed just 300 internet users, equally split between male and female, aged between 20 and 49 from all over the country, on the 20th of December 2005.

I’m an Opera and Becky! man myself.


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infoPLANT recently carried out a survey to find out what people do with their mobiles (other than phone calls and mail, of course) and what they want their next mobile to do. By means of an option placed within the public iMode service menus for twelve days in the middle of December they got 7,905 respondents to their questions, 37% male. More detailed demographics were not available.

In my case, the calculator feature is about the only one I use with any degree of frequency, although I am rather controlled by my wife’s phone’s alarm and schedule! I do have a number of ring tones downloaded, but as my phone is in manner mode nearly all the time, that probably doesn’t count. For my next phone, the one feature I perhaps want most of all would be a smoother input method, but not voice-based, as that would be far too embarrassing on the train!

It would be interesting to see how these figures compared with a similar survey performed in Europe or the USA.
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INFOPlant performed a survey at the end of last November to find out people’s views on buying domestic cars. 8,559 people, 38.8% male, filled in a questionnaire available through an iMode menu.

I don’t see myself buying a car of any origin in the forseeable future. Living right in front of the railway station and with all stores offering cheap home delivery for big stuff, it’s so much cheaper to just rent whenever I have a need for my own transport. Also, running costs, or more accurately, sitting in the parking area not running anywhere costs, are pretty steep in Japan, even if the vehicle itself is relatively cheap.
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infoPlant published a survey on purchase and consumption of low-alcohol drinks. They got 6,071 responses, 63.3% female, from their usual method of an iMode menu-based prize draw survey, held for a week at the end of November.

Note that low-alcohol drinks here are not what you might guess them to be, namely reduced- or zero-alcohol beers, but instead means any alcoholic drink that is not too strong; a chugging rather than a sipping drink, perhaps. The survey introduction specifically mentions chu-hai, a usually rather dangerous fruity cocktail that often weighs in at 7% alcohol by volume yet tastes like just a fruit soda, along with beer and ready-mixed can cocktails as being the drinks of interest in the questionnaire.

Whether or not people were answering for themselves personally or for their whole family, or whether or not purchases in bars and restaurants were included is not clear, although I suspect that it means store-bought alcohol, judging by the answers to question 2.
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