世論 What Japan Thinks

Perhaps the headline is a little misleading, given that so much television in Japan can be found on the internet, and places like Nico-Nico Douga can make it interactive (but lets ignore the copyright issues), so perhaps the results of this survey from JR Tokai Express Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into television and internet are not as cut and dried as they seem.

Demographics

Over the 16th and 17th of July 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 61.5% of the sample were female (a surprisingly, if not suspiciously, high figure for JR Tokai) 17.9% were in their twenties, 37.0% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 12.4% in their fifties, and 5.5% in their sixties.

When a similar survey was conducted two years ago (which I am sure I translated, but I cannot find it!), television won in the fun stakes, but despite the wider availability of digital television with more interactivity and One Seg becoming a standard feature on most mobiles, and despite digital video recorders allowing users to watch television when they want to, broadcasting has lost out to computers. I’d love to know what exactly people found fun or not fun about both media and what has become more or less fun in the last two years; perhaps that information is available in the full survey.
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Perhaps it’s just the types of web sites I frequent (Slashdot and digg, for instance), or perhaps it’s just that people are reluctant to admit to filesharing even semi-anonymously, but this recent survey conducted by goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into movie watching showed P2P the second least-popular way for obtaining movies.

Demographics

Between the 14th and 16th of May 2008 1,087 members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.4% of the sample was male, 12.1% were in their teens, 22.1% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 28.0% aged fifty or older.

“Better than free” is the basic strategy pursued by many paid services that compete with pirated content. Apple’s iTunes, in particular, mostly achieves this goal, but other systems I have used, especially from large Japanese corporates, are nowhere near realising this. I’ve not personally used any of these mail-order DVD rental systems, as most of my film needs are met by either the cinema or stuff recorded off cable.

I’m not sure why video tape-only people were eliminated from Q2, and finding out the patterns of usage of tape and DVD (and hard disk, for that matter) would have been interesting. Perhaps if one pays to obtain the full results one can learn these details. I’m also a little surprised that Video On Demand and acTVila were not distinct answers for Q2.
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Here’s a subject that I haven’t seen a survey on for a while; goo Research used to do a regular monthly survey up until last year when they dropped it and replaced it with a Wikipedia one. The topic, as reported on by japan.internet.com, was RSS readers.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 11th of March 2008 1,100 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 12.0% in their teens, 22.7% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 27.6% aged fifty or older.

Pictured above is my statistics from my RSS feed at FeedBurner for Thursday the 15th of May 2008, my highest ever susbscriber count of 1,991; to each of you I say thank you very much!

I couldn’t blog without RSS - I use Google Reader, and for example to find news for my Trusted Computing blog I have subscribed to half a dozen Google blog and news searches, so whenever a new story appears I get an automatic reminder. On the other hand, for this site half my sources do not offer feeds, which is a bit of a pain.
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If you miss the last train home, a good tip I hear is to spend the night in an internet cafe. To see how popular that and other activities are at these places, MyVoice recently performed a survey on this very topic of internet cafes.

Demographics

Over the first five days of March 2008 14,691 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a private online questionnaire. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 16% in their fifties.

Although I have never set foot in one, I have an image of internet cafes as dim and dingy places. I should really visit once just to confirm or dispel my prejudice, but as most will no doubt have a permanent fog of cigarette smoke I might not last more than a couple of minutes!

Last year one of the Words of the Year was Net Cafe Refugees, people working in casual cash-in-hand jobs by day, and dossing down in the cafe by night.
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Here’s another quickie survey today (sorry, a bit busy these days to concentrate on long translations!), again reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh into the matter of e-learning.

Demographics

Between the 26th and 31st of March 2008 300 members of the Marsh internet monitor group completed a private online questionnaire. The sexes were split 50:50, and by age 20.0% were in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 13.3% in their fifties, and 6.7% aged sixty or older.

I once tried an internet site that offered Kanji Kentei training, but I didn’t really enjoy it much, and anyway now there’s Nintendo DS software for kanji practice for round about the same price as three months on the web site, why bother? Talking of the DS, looking at the results below it seems that e-learning here means internet-delivered contents, not software.
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With the Nova bunny finally succumbing to myxomatosis last year, there has been a good number of people with nowhere to learn English. So, this recent survey from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com regarding studying English conversation looks at if people might be interested in virtually learning the language.

Demographics

On the 29th of March 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor panel employed in either public or private industry completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 77.9% of the sample was male, 12.4% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 34.5% in their forties, 10.3% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties.

English conversation differs from actual English language study, as it is based on the theory that if you sit a Japanese person beside an English speaker, there will be a miraculous transfer of the contents of the victim’s wallet language abilities. There are of course a few good schools and teachers, but the mass market companies are not much more than social clubs for both the students and teachers.
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One of the big new things for television in Japan these days is AcTVila, basically a portal site for internet-connected televisions. A recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by March Inc into usage of AcTVila investigated awareness of the technology.

Demographics

Between the 6th and 10th of March 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 13.3% in their fifties, and 6.7% aged sixty or older.

I’ve not played with the service myself, and I’m still on an analogue television, so I’m a bit in the dark about the whole affair! I’ve not even seen advertisements for the service, or television manufacturers promoting support for it in their advertising, so I’m not sure where the awareness is coming from.
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I’ve not played anything online for years but perhaps I am missing out on something, judging by this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by goo Research into online gaming.

Demographics

Over the 13th and 14th of March 2008 1,096 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.6% of the sample were male, 17.6% in their teens, 19.4% in their twenties, 16.1% in their thirties, 17.0% in their forties, 18.4% in their fifties, and 11.5% aged sixty or older.

Note that Q1 means computers only, not consoles or handheld machines.

In the comments for another article I got wind of a new (currently in closed beta) MMORPG, Hello Kitty Online, apparently a mix of RPG-type quests and guilds, puzzles, virtual property development, and an SNS.
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This is a recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and performed by JR Tokai Express Research Inc on the topic of internet site viewing habits.

Demographics

On the 4th of February 2008 334 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group employed in the private or public sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 83.2% of the sample was male, 9.9% in their twenties, 39.5% in their thirties, 38.0% in their forties, 10.8% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.

That’s quite interesting, if not amazing, that three in ten spend most of their time on portals, with of course Yahoo! getting the lion’s share of that. Conversely, over half check five or less sites regularly. For myself, I’d say I spend most time at news sites, and if I count just Google Reader for all my RSS feeds, there’s less than 10 that I regularly check.
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Although previous surveys have shown that 4% used P2P software at the time of the survey, this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Research on the use of audio-visual contents on home computers shows a slightly different picture.

Demographics

Between the 28th of February and the 3rd of March 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor panel with a computer at home completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 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, 13.3% in their fifties, and 6.7% in their sixties.

Note that Marsh Research are a new-to-me research company.

I don’t bother downloading music myself, but I may or may not have occasionally downloaded a movie or two of dubious provenance, not that I actually ever have time to watch them! Having said that, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is playing in the background as I translate this article.
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