世論 What Japan Thinks

With Japan’s population aging at quite a pace, japan.internet.com published the results of some timely research by JR Tokai Express Research into old folks-targeted web sites. They interviewed 330 mature people from their internet monitor group; 74.5% were male, and 70.9% were in their 50s, 26.1% in their sixties, and 3.0% in their seventies.

Note being of that age yet, I cannot really comment, but my father is currently learning how to surf as part of free training provided by the Scottish (or British?) government for everyone of a retired age. Currently all of the internet is delegated to my mother, so we’ll see wht he gets up to after he finished his training!
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a poll conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the use of calendars, both computer desktop-based and paper ones. They interviewed 330 people employed in both the public and private sectors from their monitor panel in the middle of December, with 77.0% of the sample being male, 16.4% in their twenties, 49.1% in their thirties, 28.8% in their forties, 5.2% in their fifties, and 0.6% in their sixties.

I’m a big paper and pencil person myself, although I do occasionally download some calendar wallpaper for both my computer and my mobile phone from Frente Spiral.
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japan.internet.com today published the results of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the trendy buzzwords of 2006. 330 members of their monitor pool employed in public or private enterprises completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 79.1% were male, 17.9% in their twenties, 44.5% in their thirties, 26.7% in their forties, 9.7% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their sixties.

I read today on Gen Kanai’s blog that Joi Ito has just been appointed chairman of Creative Commons, so with Creative Commons being the most confusing of the words for the Japanese, this survey suggests one issue he may need to approach.

Note that most of the words have come into Japanese either using the English spelling or transliterated into katakana, so that makes it harder for the average person to figure out the meaning. The only one meriting a translation is 集合知, shuugouchi, Wisdom of Crowds, the term that describes Web Two-Point-Zero sites like for instance digg, where the theory goes that the masses will ensure that the most interesting stories will naturally get promoted up to the top of the pile. As one could probably predict, however, the stories that make the front page tend to be those promoted by the top users, and those that attract their attention more often than not are “Top [Ten/Twenty/100] [Tips/Tools/Downloads] for [Linux/Photoshop/iPod]“.
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At the end of last month japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into Windows Vista. They interviewed by means of a private internet-based survey 330 people from their monitor panel employed in public or private enterprises; 81.8% of the group was male, 12.7% in their twenties, 39.4% in their thirties, 35.2% in their forties, 11.8% in their fifties, and 0.9% in their sixties.

I’ve used a couple of the early developer releases of Vista, and quite frankly I was seriously unimpressed. One key reason was the overload in warnings every time you tried to do anything that affected system settings which served no useful purpose other than to train the user to aim for the OK button regardless of the details of any warning displayed. I don’t know how the final version has got round this problem. The other reason was that we couldn’t get a decent graphics card and display driver configured, so the front end was exceptionally slow. In addition, due to the beta nature, I suppose, Visual Studio 2005 crashed frequently and randomly. I’ll definitely be staying clear until at least the first service pack appears!
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japan.internet.com published the results of a survey conducted on the 11th of November amongst 330 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s internet monitor group on the topic of printers. 67.3% of the 330 people who completed the private questionnaire were male, 21.8% were in their twenties, 43.0% in their thirties, 26.1% in their forties, 6.7% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

Q1 is confusing as how does someone not know if they have a printer at home or not! I like my home Canon, mostly because the separate ink cartridges for each colour works out cheaper in the long run. However, I’ve heard (but not quite calculated the exact costs myself) that it is cheaper to order digital camera photo prints rather than running them off yourself, although the convenience aspect perhaps outweighs the cost saving.

In Q3, I’m not really sure why people would have a printer connected to their PC by more than one means, but apparently up to 6 people do.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of an opinion poll conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the subject of online stocks and shares trading. They interviewed 330 people employed in public or private enterprises; 82.4% of the sample was male, 10.9% in their twenties, 49.1% in their thirties, 32.7% in their forties, 6.7% in their fifties, and 0.6% in their sixties.

I know there’s a few people in my office who do online trading, but I don’t know what sort of portfolio they have outside of the company’s own employee share system, or how active they are. I used to have a few shares from privatisations back home, and come to think of it, I might even have some hiding somewhere that I’ve lost touch with. Didn’t Standard Life go private recently and give away many free shares to the policy holders?
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the topic of mobile phone design. 330 members of their monitor pool chose to reply to the private internet-based survey. 64.2% of the sample were male, 18.5% in their twenties, 44.2% in their thirties, 27.0% in their forties, 8.2% in their fifties, and 2.1% in their sixties.

My current mobile is a matt black adult elegance (not quite designer-ish enough to be an art phone) P702iD, but my current favourite design-wise is NEC’s credit card N702iD, especially in the bold red colour. The black “magnetic strip” actually operates as a ticker for mail preview or news headlines, etc.
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With MNP, Mobile Number Portability, having just started in Japan, japan.internet.com reported that JR Tokai Express Research performed a survey into people’s views on MNP. They interviewed just 330 people from their internet monitor group by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 66.3% of the sample was male, 33.3% female, so where that places the remaining one person, I don’t know! 17.3% were in their twenties, 41.8% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 11.8% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.

The sample size for Q1SQ is very small, so it is difficult to extrapolate these figures, but it does seem that DoCoMo is the biggest loser and au the biggest winner. This backs up unofficial figures I heard of about 400,000 net loss to DoCoMo, 600,000 gain for au, and 200,000 less customers at Softbank, despite their suicidal price slashing. UPDATE: I was out by a factor of ten or so! This morning’s TV (recalling from memory, so the figures might not be 100% accurate!) said that au gained a net 103,000 customers, DoCoMo lost 75,000, and Softbank 23,000 over the last week. The figures don’t add up because there are also brand new customers included in the overall totals, I believe, and each company perhaps uses different counting methods.

For me, I had enough problem working out how to use my new phone from the same maker and service provider, so I’d be put off taking advantage of MNP and having to learn a whole new service model too!
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Last month japan.internet.com reported on the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research into mail client software. They interviewed 330 people from their monitor pool employed in public or private enterprises. 80.6% of the sample was male, 9.4% in their twenties, 45.8% in their thirties, 34.2% in their forties, 9.4% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their sixties.

Not suprisingly, Microsoft rules the roost here, as it does with browsers too. I’m a Becky! user myself at both home and at work; Becky! is, in fact, the recommended work mailer as the Outlook family is prone to be a vector for viruses.
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japan.internet.com reported on an opinion poll conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the use of dictionaries. 331 members of their internet monitor pool successfully completed the survey, with 61.3% of the group male, 16.9% in their twenties, 41.7% in their thirties, 28.1% in their forties, 9.7% in their fifties, and 3.6% in their sixties.

It may be useful to reference a previously-translated survey on electronic dictionaries. I’m surprised that ALC didn’t make it into the list as it seems rather a popular destination for the people in my office, for instance.
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