世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently published the results of some research conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into Internet Explorer v7.0. 330 members of their online monitor group employed in private industry were interviewed by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. Thanks to Gen Kanai at Mozilla Japan for prompting me to publish it!

Demographics

Of the 330 in the sample, 82.7% were male, 13.6% in their twenties, 4.0% in their thirties, 30.9% in their forties, 7.3% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their sixties.

As an Opera user myself, I am not overly impressed by Internet Explorer 7, and never use it except for the corporate internet (which actually doesn’t yet officially support version 7, and in fact I’m not supposed to have upgraded, but that’s another story!) and Windows Update.

It’s difficult to know how to interpret the degree of satisfaction in Q1SQ2. Are people comparing it with the previous version and just rating the new features, or are they considering the whole package?
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research towards the end of February investigating the subject of opinions about mobile phone weight and size. Note for reference that a survey last year found that the most popular by far form factor for phones was the clamshell.

Demographics

Of the 330 people from JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor pool who completed the survey, 51.2% were male, 25.8% in their twenties, 40.3% in their thirties, 25.5% in their forties, 6.7% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.

When I pick up a typical Japanese model, to me there just seems to be nothing but a skeleton there. Nothing to hold on to, and I am afraid to squeeze too hard in case they break. I worry too about living with them, perhaps they are all looks and no substance. I feel the same way about modile phones too.

Seriously, I do find most of the DoCoMo 900 series too chunky, but I’m happy with my standard-sized Panasonic P702iD clamsheel. Also note that there are three news phones claiming to be the thinnest in the world, given certain qualifications: the DoCoMo N703iμ and P703iμ are both 11.4mm thick clamshells, and the SoftBank 708SC is an 8.4mm candybar. In addition, the positively obese Motorola MOTORAZR, at 14.9mm, is being promoted quite heavily in Japan.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into how people rate the company they work for. The fieldwork was conducted on the 14th of February, with 330 people from their online monitor group successfully completing a private internet-based questionnaire. It’s probably useful to cross-reference this with my recent translation of a survey on middle-age job opportunities.

Demographics

The 330 people were all employed in private industry, with an overwhelming 95.5% male. All of the sample was aged 30 or older, with 35.8% in their thirties, 52.7% in their forties, 10.6% in their fifties, and 0.9% in their sixties.

My degree of satisfaction (or otherwise, as the case may be) with my employer is documented to some extent in my weekly newsletter, available by either entering your email address in the box below, or by visiting the newsletter archives on Google. Only recently have I started to put some effort into resolving matters, but I am seeing possible signs that something positive may happen.

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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the topic of home computer monitors. On the 4th of February they interviewed 330 people employed in the public and private sectors. 76.7% of the sample was male, 17.9% in their twenties, 39.7% in their thirties, 31.5% in their forties, 10.3% in their fifties, and 0.6% in their sixties.

It’s interesting that Japanese prefered the more modestly-sized monitors. I wonder if this reflects the lack of free space in the average Japanese home? I know for my part I couldn’t really fit in anything more than the 17 inch I currently use at home. Not having been shopping for monitors recently, however, I cannot guess as to what the price of a new LCD monitor might be!
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the subject of job opening for mid-career job-seekers. At the start of February they interviewed 330 people between the ages of 30 and 69 employed in the private sector in some sort of personnel-related capacity. 69.4% of the sample was male, 41.5% in their thirties, 38.5% in their forties, 17.9% in their fifties, and 2.1% in their sixties.

As you have no doubt heard, Japanese firms tend to employ people under the assumption by both the employer and employee that it will be a job for life, although recently this trend has been changing, due to both firms wishing to reduce headcount and to people wanting to change. I think it wasn’t until about five years ago that my employer (one of the largest in Japan) first asked people if they wished to take early retirement or redundancy. The founder is regarded as a god of management who I suspect might be turning in his grave (or whatever the equivalent cliché is for the cremated) if he knew that one of the newest factories is mainly employing casual contract labour. I better shut up now before I get sacked…

UPDATE: Thanks to fukumimi for clearing up a rather fundamental mistake in my initial translation!
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on the subject of mobile phones and spam. Over three days at the start of February 330 peope from their monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 51.8% feamle, with 26.7% in their twenties, 40.6% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, 5.5% in their fifties, and 2.1% in their sixties.

I’ve been spam-free on my phone, perhaps because I only sign up with reputable firms. However, my wife has used YNot electronic greeting cards just recently, and has been plagued with a flood of spam from Rakuten partners. As I mentioned in another post when talking about Rakuten, they really are bad for sending spam and making it painful to unsubscribe. However, I think this time I have managed to unsubscribe from everything…
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Recently, japan.internet.com reported on a survey performed by JR Tokai Express Research looking at what people were drinking when they were on the net. 46.1% of the respondents were female, 23.9% in their twenties, 41.2% in their thirties, 26.7% in their forties, 4.8% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties.

In Q1, in the “Other” category, two people admitted to boozing at work… I drink black tea and mineral water at work, and filtered tap water at home.

I’ve had an idea for ages that a wonderful device for home PCs would be a “surf-a-lizer”, basically a breathaliser for your PC. You set it up (when sober, of course) to require you to breath into the bag before opening certain programs or accessing certain sites, stopping you sending embarrassing emails, mad online shopping sprees, or logging onto an online game only to get your character savaged by monsters in an attack of beer-fuddled bravado.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on the results of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Search into company intranet accounts and security. They interviewed 330 people from their monitor group on the 24th of January employed in the public or private sector. 94.8% were male (very high for them – it’s usually 80% or so, so I wonder if this is a misprint?), 17.9% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 32.4% in their forties, 7.3% in their fifties, and 0.9% aged sixty or older.

I’d have to answer “don’t know” to Q2 and Q3 too. Rather timely considering this survey, we’ve just had email from the IS team to say that the minimum password length for the intranet is being increased, plus it must contain at least one alphabetic and one numeric or symbol character, and from next month the password must be changed once every 30 days. As a bonus, we can also put a space character into it.

We have now at least four or five passwords between the user and the corporate network: desktops have BIOS password, Windows log in password, router password, and intranet password. For notebook computers it’s BIOS password, disk encryptor password, Windows log in password, wireless LAN smart card password, and intranet password. All these passwords are on different lifetime schedules, and of course most of them cannot be automated. All I can forsee is that the number of PostIt Notes around monitors will increase!
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japan.internet.com recently reported on the results of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into what bosses thought about their subordinates blogging (and other unreported topics related to business blogs). They interviewed 330 people managers in public and private companies; a mere 5.2% were female (see other surveys on this subject), 0.9% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 53.9% in their forties, 21.2% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties. Just these demographics alone are fascinating!

My direct boss has read this blog on occassion, but I always have the concern that perhaps someone in the personel department may be monitoring it for any statement that I may make which are against some company policy or other. Therefore I try to avoid telling about how really horrid wonderful my job is. Here’s one bit of hopefully non-confidential information: I am from 5pm today the longest-serving foreigner in our division, as the guy ahead of me just quit. I don’t know whether to to be proud or depressed.

Have any of my readers in Japan got into trouble for blogging? Hopefully nothing as serious as an American resident in Korea who got sacked for blogging about how Korea’s view on one aspect of history may not be correct.
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japan.internet.com finally got out of holiday mode and published their first summary of a survey for the new Year, one conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on the 28th of December on the prospect of domestic robots. 330 members of their research monitor group successfully completed the internet-based questionnaire. 46.7% of the sample was male, 13.3% in their twenties, 51.2% in their thirties, 27.0% in their forties, 6.4% in their fifties, and 2.1% in their sixties.

This is a subject that I have previously reported on, but in the year or so since I did that translation there seems to have been a bit of a shift in favour of robots.

Note that in Q2, the “robo-partner” answer does seem to mean seeing the robot as a spouse!
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