世論 What Japan Thinks

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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My new place, being a bit posh, is serviced by a Co-op home delivery service that perhaps at least 10% take advantage of, but we’ve never tried, and I don’t know if people order via the phone or by the internet. Wifey also occasionally orders ready-made foods via phone, fax, and internet, so this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into food ingredient online home delivery services was of interest to me. Note that this is for ingredients, not prepared food delivery.

Demographics

On the 22nd of February 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor team employed in either the public or private sector took part in a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.3% were male, 17.9% were in their twenties, 36.4% in their thirties, 26.1% in their forties, 6.1% in their fifties, and 8.2% in their sixties. Note that usually JR Tokai Express has 80% male when they survey employed people, so I don’t know if the more even sex balance is due to them selecting a more balanced group, an error in the report, or self-selection.

I suppose the main thing stopping me from using online ordering is that for fresh items, I really want to be able to cast my eye over them to check that I am picking the best available, not just good enough.
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One online game I see heavily advertised in Japan is a free online RPG Maple Story, although I’ve never actually played it myself, and I take no responsibility from any addiction caused by clicking through that link! To see what the average Japanese person plays at online, MyVoice performed a survey on online games.

Demographics

Over the first five days of February 2008 15,447 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 16% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 17% in their fifties.

I used to play online games, starting with the sadly departed Meridian 59, then beta testing Ultima Online, Everquest as both a beta and a paid-for player, then finally Asheron’s Call for quite a bit until I found out that being an anti-social git meant I didn’t get very far ahead. I still miss Meridian 59, as it was small enough to form real friendships, in fact even leading to a real-life meeting with a bunch of other people once. I don’t think I’d ever do that again as there seems to be far too many weirdos about these days, or maybe it’s just I’m a bit older and less naive.
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[part 1][part 2][part 3]

This is a story I saw reported in the English press as merely a snippet of the results of Q6, that 79% of Japanese want internet filtering for children, but that one figure is perhaps one of the more dull numbers to come from this survey from the Cabinet Office Japan on ensuring internet safety.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 25th of November 2007 5,000 people were randomly selected from presumably the voter rolls to take part in the survey. Of the 5,000, 3,006 agreed to complete the survey, conducted by means of face-to-face interviews. The sample was 52.7% female, 8.8% in their twenties, 16.0% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 20.2% in their fifties, 21.2% in their sixties, and 17.7% seventy or older. 26.3% of the sample had children under the age of 18. Of these 790 people, 35.3% were under school age, 45.6% of elementary school age, 28.6% of middle school age, 26.7% of high school age, and 6.5% had already graduated, quit school, or other. Of the parents with school age children, 23.9% gave mobile phones to all their children, 17.0% gave them to some, 58.6% to none, and 0.5% didn’t know.

Note that human rights abuse, slander, shopping fraud and copyright infringement are out of scope for the Internet Hotline Centre. In addition, for all you music and video thieves out there, only 20.0% of the survey think the police should be targeting them.
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[part 1][part 2][part 3]

This is a story I saw reported in the English press as merely a snippet of the results of Q6, that 79% of Japanese want internet filtering for children, but that one figure is perhaps one of the more dull numbers to come from this survey from the Cabinet Office Japan on ensuring internet safety.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 25th of November 2007 5,000 people were randomly selected from presumably the voter rolls to take part in the survey. Of the 5,000, 3,006 agreed to complete the survey, conducted by means of face-to-face interviews. The sample was 52.7% female, 8.8% in their twenties, 16.0% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 20.2% in their fifties, 21.2% in their sixties, and 17.7% seventy or older. 26.3% of the sample had children under the age of 18. Of these 790 people, 35.3% were under school age, 45.6% of elementary school age, 28.6% of middle school age, 26.7% of high school age, and 6.5% had already graduated, quit school, or other. Of the parents with school age children, 23.9% gave mobile phones to all their children, 17.0% gave them to some, 58.6% to none, and 0.5% didn’t know.

Q5 and Q6 show an interesting result. First, over three in five knew nothing about filtering, but after being shown one card highlighting that 80% of crimes associated with deai-kei sites involve children, and another stating that filtering can block access to deai-kei sites, nearly four in five reach the conclusion that filtering is necessary. Q7 and Q8 repeat a similar pattern; 70% had never heard of the Internet Hotline Centre, yet 70% could conclude that it was a good thing.

That Internet Hotline Centre has some interesting information; for example, on the reporting form there is one option:

Information which is difficult to judge illegal but seems to be illegal (Example: Displaying child pornography)

Is that saying what I think it’s saying?
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[part 1][part 2][part 3]

This is a story I saw reported in the English press as merely a snippet of the results of Q6, that 79% of Japanese want internet filtering for children, but that one figure is perhaps one of the more dull numbers to come from this survey from the Cabinet Office Japan on ensuring internet safety.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 25th of November 2007 5,000 people were randomly selected from presumably the voter rolls to take part in the survey. Of the 5,000, 3,006 agreed to complete the survey, conducted by means of face-to-face interviews. The sample was 52.7% female, 8.8% in their twenties, 16.0% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 20.2% in their fifties, 21.2% in their sixties, and 17.7% seventy or older. 26.3% of the sample had children under the age of 18. Of these 790 people, 35.3% were under school age, 45.6% of elementary school age, 28.6% of middle school age, 26.7% of high school age, and 6.5% had already graduated, quit school, or other. Of the parents with school age children, 23.9% gave mobile phones to all their children, 17.0% gave them to some, 58.6% to none, and 0.5% didn’t know.

In part one, Q1 notes that just over two in five are regular internet users. This may cause some of you to dismiss the results, but these non-users may very well have children or grandchildren that may encounter nasty stuff on the internet, so their opinion should not be readily dismissed. In Q2SQ, there is the very Japanese crime of “One-click fraud” – perhaps like Amazon’s One Click Shopping™, you click on a link on a dodgy site and up comes a message telling you you owe them a vast sum of money for membership fees.
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The Trade Union Congress in the UK recently called for workers to be allowed some MySpace time, and one gets the impression that in the USA the ability to use company resources for personal internet access and private telephone calls is a fundamental human right, but what of Japan? A recent report from japan.internet.com on a survy conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into employee internet access management shone some light on this topic.

Demographics

On the 16th of January 2008 330 people from the JR Tokai Express Research monitor pool employed in private enterprises or other organisations as directors, senior management, personnel, or in other management or planning roles completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 75.8% were male, 4.5% in their twenties, 27.9% in their thirties, 44.2% in their forties, 19.1% in their fifties, and 4.2% in their sixties.

Our rules are actually set in place mostly by personnel or other management divisions in order to try to comply with J-SOX issues, with a bit extra from the MIS department. Many of our policies are on paper sensible (though over-stringent), but the justification they add is often laughable. My favourite is their restriction on writing to bulletin boards; apparently someone wrote over 20 messages one day to a train-spotter message board and the owner complained about being flooded with traffic… My pet hate is that Skype is forbidden, even though for people on business trips it can be the cheapest way to keep in touch with family (and the office), due to paranoia about file-sharing and flooding the local network if it becomes a hub, but both these options can be turned off. I did consider renaming notepad.exe to skype.exe or winny.exe just to put the wind up the MIS department, but I suspect they don’t have a sense of humour. Oh, and they also forbid Opera 9 due to the risk of the inbuilt BitTorrent client leaping into life and sharing the whole hard drive.

I in no way whatsoever work on the basis of if it isn’t blocked by the proxy, it’s fair game.
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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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