世論 What Japan Thinks

I’ve never heard (as it were) of people surfing under voice control at work (excluding swearing at the browser for crashing or the internet for being slow, of course) but a recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on browsing at work showed that these sort of people do exist.

Demographics

On the 7th of June 2007 333 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor pool employed in private industry completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 70.9% of the sample were male, 10.5% in their twenties, 52.0% in their thirties, 29.1% in their forties, 6.0% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

Sadly there was no question asked (or at least not reported) on how much of the time was spent on work-related versus private-related activities. Our workplace strictly forbids private surfing.

Q2 is a bit confusing to answer regarding feed reading – does using services like Google Reader or Bloglines count as using a feed reader? Therefore, I find the figures in that table a bit unreliable. I also wonder why so many people don’t know how they are surfing.
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One of things my employer does manage to do right with my corporate mail box is keep it almost free from spam, with barely one per day getting past the filters, although I have no idea how many spams get caught, but I suspect it may be quite a few as my work email address can be found in postings on the internet. Sadly, a recent survey published by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on the topic of workplace email does not report on how much of an issue spam is in the average workplace.

Demographics

On the 8th of June 2007 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group who worked in private industry completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 73.0% of the sample was male, 13.3% in their twenties, 45.5% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 8.5% in their fifties, and 5.5% in their sixties.

Daily mail volume at work is probably close to 70 or so, including corporate internal semi-spam. However, … ahh, I must apply some self-censorship here, so just read the results, please.
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If you hang around engineer-related web sites too long you get the impression that everyone is building their own computer in a desparate attempt to demonstrate that theirs is bigger than yours. But, what about in Japan? I’ve never tried asking my co-workers what they do, so perhaps this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on the topic of building your own PC can be an excuse to ask them about their habits.

Demographics

On the 6th of June 2007 331 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s monitor panel who were either employed or did in their spare time software development, system development, or system management successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 93.1% of the sample was male, 7.6% in their twenties, 37.8% in their thirties, 45.9% in their forties, 8.2% in their fifties, and 0.6% in their sixties.

Perhaps other married people can relate to me, but since tying the knot my PC budget has disappeared, so barring when a video card and a hard disk died, I’ve not delved into my computer for many a year.
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With the worries about “stranger danger” in Japan far outweighing the reality of the situation, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on the topic of children and mobile phones.

Demographics

On the 6th of June 2007 JR Tokai Express Research received 330 successfully-completed questionnaires from members of its internet monitor group aged between 30 and 59. 73.0% of the sample was female, 49.1% in their thirties, 33.9% in their forties, and 17.0% in their fifties.

Some of the proposed systems for tracking children are in my opinion worse than the original problem and are robbing children of their childhood.
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2 Channel is the bulletin board system that mkes all the news in Japan, usually for all the wrong reasons! It is a cess-it, albeit an extremely popular cess-pit, always ready to pounce on the latest scandal and spread much muck, along with the all to rare smidgeon of truth. To learn more about what people get out of these boards, japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research on the very topic of internet bulletin board usage.

Demographics

On the 16th of May 2007 JR Tokai Express Research interviewed 330 people by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.5% of the sample was female, 22.4% in their twenties, 36.7% in their forties, 23.9% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 6.1% in their sixties.

About the only bulletin board I’m active on these days is the Digital Point forums.
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japan.internet.com reported on another small but interesting survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the use of office suites. this survey is timely with Nihon University recently announcing that from April 1st this year they would be using Google Apps, and Ashisuto have announced they are moving from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org.

Demographics

On the 17th of May 2007, 330 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor pool completed an internet-based private survey. All were employed in public or private industry, 73.6% were male, 13.3% in their twenties, 40.3% in their thirties, 34.2% in their forties, 9.7% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

This result is not particularly surprising, given that other surveys have shown a virtual monopoly by Microsoft in the workplace for browsers and operating systems.

I personally haven’t used either OpenOffice.org or Google Apps, and work has corporate licences for Microsoft Office, and given the rather heavy reliance on PowerPoint (if I were in management here, I’d ban it) in particular, I cannot see any prospect of change. Interestingly, perhaps, a couple of months ago we gathered together money-saving tips, but no-one suggested using open source office applications to save on licensing. However, given that all other departments would be using Office, without 100% compatability we couldn’t change. In addition, many macro-filled Excel spreadsheets are used within the company, so I suspect they would not be usable in other spreadsheet tools.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the matter of corporate blogs. This can be considered as a follow-up to the survey published yesterday on company-internal blogs and SNS.

Demographics

On the 17th of May 2007 JR Tokai Express Research gathered responses from 330 members of its online monitor group employed in private industry. 76.4% of the sample was male, 10.3% in their twenties, 40.6% in their thirties, 37.6% in their forties, 9.1% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

My employer has neither a corporate blog nor a president’s blog. We get once a month press release-like messages from the prez, and at one time our division manager tried starting an internal blog, but the plan died horribly. I think people expressing opinions was the main issue that stifled any progress.
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japan.internet.com recently published a summary of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on the topic of company internal blogs and Social Networking Services (SNS).

Demographics

330 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor group in salaried employment successfully completed a private internet-based survey between the 8th and 10th of May 2007. 69.7% of the group was male, 18.2% in their twenties, 44.8% in their thirties, 24.8% in their forties, 8.8% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties.

I always find it difficult to comment on these sorts of surveys as I fear I might stray too far into criticism of my employer, so I’ll not bore you with my experiences with groupware activities at my place of work.

There will be a significant difference, I think, between the availability figures in Q1 and the actual usage figures by either the respondent or others at the company, but sadly that is not reported.

For reference, I previously translated goo Research’s more detailed look at company internal communication issues.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into personel systems, in particular in this report, in how salaries are calculated.

Demographics

On the 30th of April 2007 JR Tokai Express Research questioned 330 members of their online monitor panel employed in either private or public enterprises. 67.3% were female, 15.2% in their twenties, 42.1% in their thirties, 31.2% in their forties, 9.4% in their fifties, and 2.1% in their sixties.

My salary is performance based with a horrendously complex evaluation system that changes almost every year. I’m just coming up to setting my targets for this year, which, as with the two 6-monthly reviews of progress towards these set goals, consists largely of horse-trading and inventing ratings so you don’t look either too good or too bad, and of course being foreign I don’t quite fit into the system, so more pointless tweaking takes place to make allowances. They have a box for TOEIC score, so instead I put down my Kanji Kentei targets, but “write like a Japanese middle-school student” is hardly a major achievement from a Japanese perspective! An ex-colleague had the right idea – he just refused to fill in any form that wasn’t in English.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the use of IP phones.

Demographics

330 members of JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group employed in the private or public sector completed a private survey conducted on the 21st of April 2007. 62.4% were male, 15.8% in their twenties, 49.4% in their thirties, 26.7% in their forties, 6.7% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties.

The main promoter of IP phones (and the biggest provider of “free” wireless connections in Japan, but that’s another story!) is Yahoo! BB, who can often be found in front of railway stations and the like thrusting ADSL routers into the hands of unsuspecting passers-by for them to use as both internet connection ports and as telephones. Their service allows free calls to other Yahoo! BB users, and almost all standard phones can just plug straight into their routers.
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