世論 What Japan Thinks

Here’s an interesting (but a fuller version would be even more interesting) survey conducted by Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into taking work computers home.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 9th of December 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were male, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

At my place of work we have a number of interesting rules regarding taking computers out of the office. I take mine home almost every day, and of course since it is forbidden I never ever use it to prepare my blog entries nor have I installed no end of tools to assist in creation of said entries, even though by deleting the uninstall entries from the registry they can be hidden from the licence checking software. Or so I’ve been told, I of course do not know if that is true or not.
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With so many free web-based mail services on offer, a surprising result from a survey conducted by Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into web email was that a number of people do actually pay for it.

Demographics

Between the 29th of November and the 2nd of December 2008 300 people from the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were male, 20.0% were in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

Unfortunately, this survey did not report what sort of services people were paying for, although perhaps if you paid Marsh some money they’d tell you. I suppose I could say that I pay for two web mail services; one through this web site hosting as I do use the web mail reading facility, and the other is PoBox.com that I use for mail forwarding my private email, although I don’t use their web mail, which is an additional charge.
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As a professional blogger (perhaps) my requirements for a blogging service are very different from the average person, so I do find it a little hard to relate to this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Inc into blogging.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 21st of November 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor panel completed an internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 by sex, and 20.0% were in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

In Q1 I think the amount of people reading commercial blogs is rather low, but I suspect it might be that because people are not seeing the URL as megacorp.com/blog, they assume that places are just hobby blogs, not commercial enterprises.

Most of the Japanese blogs, particularly the personal blogs, make Facebook look tasteful.
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I remember last time I was looking for an electronic book survey two came along at once, and this time too I have seen a couple in quick succession, so I’ll again double them up. Both surveys were reported on by japan.internet.com, and the first was on electronic books and conducted by iBridge Research Plus, and the second on book purchasing online and conducted by Marsh Inc.

Demographics

For the iBridge survey, between the 30th of October and the 1st of November 2008 300 members of the iBridge monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.3% of the sample were female, 16.0% in their twenties, 39.7% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 11.3% in their fifties, and 5.7% aged sixty or older. For the Marsh survey, between the 31st of October and the 4th of November 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were male, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

In Q2 from iBridge, 青空文庫, Aozora Bunko, Blue Sky Library, is a great place to find stuff to read, although the formatting could do with some work to be more friendly to modern browsers that can display readings of kanji over the characters rather than inline after them. However, this is a list of viewers for Aozora Bunko. The last book I read from there was Kenji Miyazawa’s Night on the Galactic Railroad, which is a nice short story for intermediate-level students. I also don’t understand why they restricted the question to PC users, since as can be seen from the viewer page, there are suitable readers for almost everything including an iPhone. Do any of my iPhone using readers want to do a road test of these packages?
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Censorship is always a hot topic in discussions regarding the internet, with recent flare-ups surrounding such matters as the government trying to remove web sites promoting suicide by sulfide gas (although Bloomberg reported how to do it), so I was pleased to see the issue being tackled by Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com in this survey on web censorship.

Research results

Between the 12th and 14th of November 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were female, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

I am certainly not for government-level censorship of either domestic or foreign web content, but I do support properly-executed legal orders for domestic sites to remove content, and of course self-regulation by service providers. The web should be neither a free-for-all or a free-for-none, but instead a healthy balance must be reached. In Q2, I think they must mean within Japan, as The Great Firewall of China is a fact.

For those curious about the Japanese language used in the original survey, I translated 検閲, ken-etsu, as censorship, and 規制, kisei, as regulation.
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Official online party political activity is banned in Japan during election periods due to legal restrictions that I am not quite sure about, but that doesn’t stop people feeling the internet has a big effect on outcomes. Given that this survey from Marsh Inc and reported on japan.internet.com was conducted just after the US elections, I wonder how much thinking of America instead of Japan affected the outcome of this look at searching for election information.

Demographics

Between the 6th and 10th of November 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were male, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

I don’t know how Japanese discussion works on the internet, but I was again extremely disappointed at the US coverage on the various social news sites, as the arguments focus around why one shouldn’t vote for the other guy rather than actually dealing with the issues. I still have little idea what Mr Obama plans to do, and given the state of the world economy these days, and given that I don’t believe he will keep all his promises, and given the size of the USA, I feel he cannot do much more than tinker at the controls for his first term.
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This is quite a surprising set of results for me, but perhaps one factor is a relative reluctance to using credit cards online, although I would have thought banks would be more of a worry? Have a look at these results published on japan.internet.com from a survey conducted by Marsh Inc into online banking.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 28th of October 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. Exactly 50.0% of the sample were male, 20.0% were in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

I’ve always meant to look into online banking – actually, all my UK money is in a bank that is online (talking of HSBC, they finally opened branches in Japan, but the one in Kobe, at least, is after the top end, people with 10 million yen or more to invest – in Japan, but never quite got round to it. I once checked my SMBC balance online, but that’s the extent of it!
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Slowly but surely online ticket purchase in Japan is expanding. This recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Inc into the very topic of online ticket purchase showed that the majority of internet users do use it for tickets too. Note that this survey excludes travel ticket purchases.

Demographics

Over the 16th and 17th of October 2008 300 members of the Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were female, and 20.0% were in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.

Recently most of the cinemas around me are offering online ticket purchase, not just for the full-price (over-priced!) seats, but also for the special ladies’ days and once a month 1,000 yen days, and judging by how fast the seats sell out, they are proving rather popular. The Toho cinema chain even offers a bilingual site, except for the most important page as linked, finding your cinema!

My wife uses Ticket Pia, but come the sale date for theatre tickets the servers get battered and the telephone becomes a quicker (or less slow, should I say, 30 minutes instead of an hour) way to get hold of the seats.
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With One Seg terrestrial digital television now having crossed the 50% threshold in mobile phones (according to another survey; this one just doesn’t quite make it), with most One Seg mobile having recording facilities, and with many of the new hard disk video recorders having options to save contents to memory cards for replay on mobile phones, this recent survey from Marsh Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into video on mobile phones looked at how these features are being used.

Demographics

Over the 2nd and 3rd of October 2008 300 mobile phone-owning members of the Marsh monitor group answered a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was evenly split 50:50 male and female, and 20:20:20:20:20 between those in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and sixty or over.

Yesterday evening I) watched One Seg for the first time, but even on a slow local train, my wife’s external aerial-free phone kept breaking up so the best we could manage was the subtitles! That probably goes some way to explaining why the numbers watching on the move are relatively low.
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A few months ago there was a couple of articles in the US press with suspect (or just poorly-reported) statistics on cellphone literature in Japan, but at the time I didn’t have any good data to refute the stories with. However, this weekend not one, but two surveys come along, one from goo Research and one from Marsh, both reported on by japan.internet.com, on this very topic of cellphone novels.

Demographics

For the goo Research sample, between the 22nd and 25th of September 2008 1,074 people from their online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 21.9% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 16.2% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

For the Marsh sample, on the 26th of September 2008 they interviewed 300 females from their monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 21.7% were in their twenties, 51.3% in their thirties, and 27.0% in their forties.

Very surprising for me is that goo Research’s mixed sample showed a higher percentage of readership than Marsh’s young female group, although the level of enjoyment was relatively similar for both groups. The reasons for this would be interesting to investigate.
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