世論 What Japan Thinks

One thing you soon notice in Japan is that a lot of people drink little bottles of… well, I’ve never really quite worked out exactly what is in these little bottles, but basically some supposedly healthy concoction. I did have one foreign friend who drunk them, but the smell of them was enough to put me off ever trying! To find out what the Japanese themselves are consuming, MyVoice performed a survey on these health drinks.

Demographics

Over the first five days of June 2007 13,228 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed an online survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

I suspect that some of these drinks do tend to quackery, but I don’t know what testing is required for them before they make their claims, although I would hazard a guess that the answer would be “not much”. Some of the advertisements have small captions saying that they are restricted to people over 15 and only one per day, so perhaps I should investigate the reason for that, although the cynical part of me says that it is just to try to convice the viewer of the potency of the brew.
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Gadgets and widgets on the desktop annoy me; I have Google Desktop installed, but I keep it parked in the task bar as when it is active it either just gets hidden when I run applications maximised, or the frequent updates distract me when trying to do work in other windows. Additionally, Opera widgets just didn’t do anything for me. This survey by MyVoice looks at what the average Japanese internet user thinks of these desktop applications, widgets and gadgets.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 5th of June 2007 13,376 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a web-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties or older.

I’m not surprised that calendars come out on top – about half the people in my office run some ancient-looking calendar app on their desktops, but I’ve not seen anyone with anything else. I did once try out a Post-It Note™-like app or two, but as mentioned above for other application types, they just didn’t appeal to me at all.
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If you are looking for iPhone emoji information, here is a story on why no emoji is killing the iPhone.

Rather than text-based smilies that we’ve looked at in earlier surveys, this time we look at the emoji graphical icons that the three main Japanese mobile operators all support to varying degrees, called 絵文字, emoji, picture characters. Here is a full table of the set of emoji common across the three main carriers, NTT DoCoMo, SoftBank, and EzWeb (au and TU-KA from KDDI) so you can see for yourself how good or bad each provider’s art work is. Recently, MyVoice investigated this subject of mobile phone emoji graphical icon usage.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 5th of June 2007 13,158 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a web-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties or older.

Note that some of the newer DoCoMo phones, such as the Panasonic P703i come with an enormous library of pseudo-emoji, implemented as embedded images in HTML mail.
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With the rather amusingly-name “My Bag” campaign to persuade Japanese consumers to start bringing their own shopping bag with them gathering steam, MyVoice recently published the results of a survey they conducted into the reuse of check-out bags. This is quite a timely survey, with the big convenience store chain 7-11 recently announcing that it would start charging 5 yen per bag at all its stores.

Demographics

Over the first five days of May 2007, 15,078 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 46% of the sample was male, 1% in their teens, 17% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

This is a subject I’ve looked at before, but this survey takes an interesting look at what exactly people do with the bags once they get home. Sadly, Q2 and Q3 were badly-worded, lumping two questions together; I would have rather seen the two parts asked individually.
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MyVoice recently published the results of their second survey into the most important meal of the day, breakfast.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 5th of May 2007 15,239 members of MyVoice’s internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

During the week my breakfast is a couple of slices of bread in the toaster and a fermented milk drink, eaten every day by myself at far too early an hour. Weekends is similar but with the addition of salad and eggs, and currently since it is in season, mint tea picked from our garden.
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MyVoice recently conducted its second survey into the topic of the consumption of drinking vinegar.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 5th of May 2007 14,891 members of the MyVoice internet community completed an online survey. 54% of the sample was female, 1% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 15% in their fifties.

A few years ago there was quite a boom in drinking vinegar, but recently I don’t hear of it so often, perhaps in part due to the downfall of Aru-Aru Daijiten. I do drink it regularly, and recently one of my favourite places to do so is C’s Garden Cafe.

In addition, I have prepared an information page on the health benefits of drinking vinegar.
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MyVoice recently published a survey looking at the topic of disposable dry-cell batteries. By disposable, I mean the single use type, not rechargeable batteries. The survey covers not just standard cylindrical batteries, but also button-type batteries.

Demographics

Over the first five days of May 2007 MyVoice surveyed 15,010 members of their internet community. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

I buy standard batteries less than once a year in packs of 20 from a home centre on the whole, although I have occasionally used an electrical superstore too. My brand is almost always Panasonic. Just about the only non-rechargeale battery-powered implements at home that use more than one battery per year are a couple of bug killers and a pair of electric candles.
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MyVoice recently published the results of a survey they conducted on the topic of convenience store multimedia terminals. This is apparently the fourth time they have conducted this survey, although the results of previous surveys are not mentioned.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 5th of May 2007 14,945 members of MyVoice’s internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 17% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

I’ve used these terminals about once every six months or so, exclusively for completing the purchase of tickets ordered by phone. Perhaps to save on delivery costs, when booking concert tickets by phone the most popular payment option seems to be via these terminals. You get a four-digit code over the phone, you go to the machine, type in your code and your home telephone number, the machine prints out a confirmation order form that you take to the counter, where the staff take your cash and print out your desired tickets.
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Given that it seems most people upgrade their cell phones once every year or so (I actually haven’t seen any data for this!), MyVoice decided to look at the issue of mobile phone recycling.

Demographics

Over the first five days of May 2007, 15,165 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 46% of the sample was male, 2% in thier teens, 18% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

I passed my previous phone back to a DoCoMo shop for recycling, and I suppose I have to trust them to completely reset all the internal memory. Mobile phone manuals are often huge tomes that are rather difficult to find your way around – I’d prefer to refuse them for a small discount, and rely on some decent web search to find what I’m looking for. On their web site, DoCoMo offer PDF copies of their manuals for download, so I wonder why they don’t promote manual-less phones?

Note that most of the 3G Japanese phones come with SIM cards, so old phones can be used by just inserting the current, live card into the old phone.
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[survey 1] [survey 2]

Over the first five days of April 2007 MyVoice surveyed its internet community regarding tea and tea-like drinks. This is the first of a pair of rather similar surveys on tea-related drinks.

Demographics

17,539 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

This is a survey I’ve been looking for for a while, as I have wanted to do an “Ask What Japan Thinks” on tea, as I do get a few visitors looking for this sort of information, so I hope the information helps you out.

Note that in Japan plastic bottles are called PET bottles, with PET standing for polyethylene terephthalate, it appears. These bottles are usually recycled separately, so most public areas have a bin for these types of bottles only. You are supposed to take the cap off (some bins now have a separate opening for them) and the label, but I must admit to not doing either, although I do always use the correct bin.
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