世論 What Japan Thinks

The winners of the 2012 New Year Postcard lottery for the Year of the Dragon (my year!) have been announced, and the winning numbers and prizes are as follows. The number to check is the six digit number at the bottom right of the card. Note that some cards do not actually have numbers, which means they are not eligible.

First prize: 030625

Choose any one from a 40 inch Sharp Aquos LED backlit LCD televison, a JTB holiday, either three nights in Shanghai or Honolulu, 2 nights in Seoul, Sapporo, Naha or Tokyo for two, or one night in one of 52 domestic hot springs resorts plus 20,000 yen’s worth of gift vouchers, Toshiba dynabook notebook plus Fujifilm FinePix JX800 digital camera plus Canon PIXUS MG4130 printer, Sharp Healthio microwave oven AX-MX2-R and Panasonic Home Bakery SD-BH104 and Zoujirishi IH rice cooker NP-NC10-TC, or 20,000 points worth of office goods from a Business Choice catalogue.

Most of the items are pretty much the same as last year.

Second prize: 071658, 153787, or 675457

Choose any one from a Sharp Plasma Buster combined humidifier and air purifier KC-A50-W, Canon IXY 410F SL digital camera plus Green House digital photo frame GHV-DF7DW plus a 4GB SD card, an Xbox360 4GB plus Kinect, a day return trip to one of 119 domestic hotels, or a Tobu non-puncturing tyre-equipped folding bicycle HB-160SUS-NT.

Third prize: last four digits 2511

Choose any one food item from 38 different ones on offer, from Godiva cookies to 125 grammes of dried shiitake mushrooms.

Fourth prize: last two digits 27 or 44

Otoshidama stamp set – a fifty yen and an eighty yen stamp, pictured above.

If you have matched any of these, go to your nearest post office before the 23th of July 2012 and either collect the stamps while you wait, or apply for any of the bigger prizes. The full prize line-up can be seen here. How did you get on? I’ll check mine later.

With the last posting day before New Year getting ever closer, this survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, into New Year postcards is a reminder to us all to get ours finished.

Demographics

Between the 29th of November and the 1st of December 2011 1,083 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 11.9% aged sixty or older.

I haven’t actually got round to even ordering my New Year postcards yet, and as I’ve been at our work Christmas end of year party tonight I’m in no fit state, so that’s another day closer to the deadline… Note, I’ve prepared this post ahead of time, so any mistakes are just the usual me, not the beer’s fault!
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The winners of the 2011 New Year Postcard lottery for the Year of the Rabbit have been announced, and the winning numbers and prizes are as follows. The number to check is the six digit number at the bottom right of the card. Note that some cards do not actually have numbers, which means they are not eligible.

First prize: 651694

Choose any one from a 40 inch Sharp Aquos LED backlit LCD televison, a JTB holiday, either three nights in Hawaii or Hong Kong, 2 nights in Korea, or one night in one of 53 domestic hot springs resorts plus 30,000 or 50,000 yen’s worth of gift vouchers, Toshiba dynabook T350/34AW-U notebook plus Fujifilm FinePix Z80 digital camera plus Canon PIXUS MG5130 printer, Sanyo CY-SPA226 electric bicycle, or 200,000 yen’s worth of office goods from a Kokuyo catalogue.

Interestingly, compared to last year the TV has been upgraded from 32 inches to 40 inches.

Second prize: 403580, 228949, or 022471

Choose any one from a Nintendo Wii plus Wii Party, Canon XY DIGITAL 400F SL digital camera plus Green House digital photo frame GHV-DF7DW plus a 4GB SD card, Sharp Plamsa Cluster air purifier KC-Z45-W, one night at one of 93 domestic hotels, or a De’Longhi coffee maker CMB6-WH.

Third prize: last four digits 8363

Choose any one food item from 38 different ones on offer, from 264 sheets of seaweed to two bottles of mango juice.

Fourth prize: last two digits 69 or 02

Otoshidama stamp set – a fifty yen and an eighty yen stamp, pictured above.

If you have matched any of these, go to your nearest post office before the 25th of July 2010 and either collect the stamps while you wait, or apply for any of the bigger prizes. The full prize line-up can be seen here. I’ve just checked mine and I’ve won two sheets of the stamps above, the same as last year. How did you get on?

Just in time for the New Year nengajo postcard season, goo Research performed a survey, reported on by japan.internet.com, into that subject, with the report focusing on a service from mixi, Japan’s largest SNS, that allows people to send physical postcards to virtual friends, while maintaining the pseudo-anonymity of people’s online handles.

Demographics

Over the 7th and 8th of December 2010 1,098 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.8% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

Since Facebook doesn’t offer such a service for Christmas cards (as far as I know), I can conclude that either such a degree of privacy is of no great concern to the average Facebook user or that the average user has no urge to send cards to their Facebook friends. Perhaps it might be more of the second, as surveys have found that Japanese have a significantly lower number of social network friends, indicating that they are more discerning about who they befriend.

Q3 is a quite surprising result from my point of view; note that the question refers to disclosing your address to mixi only, not to your contacts on the SNS, yet 70% don’t feel too happy about doing so.
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The winners of the 2010 New Year Postcard lottery for the Year of the Tiger have been announced, and the winning numbers and prizes are as follows. The number to check is the six digit number at the bottom right of the card. Note that some cards do not actually have numbers, which means they are not eligible…

First prize: 975424

Choose any one from a 32 inch Sharp Aquos LCD televison, a JTB holiday, either three nights in Hawaii or Hong Kong, 2 nights in Korea, or one night in one of 58 domestic hot springs resorts, Toshiba dynabook EX notebook plus Casio EXILIM EX-Z450GD digital camera plus Canon PIXUS MP560 printer, Canon iVIS HF21 video camera, or 200,000 yen’s worth of office furniture from an ASKUL catalogue.

Second prize: 630838, 446722, or 259668

Choose any one from a Nintendo Wii plus Wii Sports Resort, Canon XY DIGITAL 220 IS digital camera, Toshia portable DVD player SD-P73DTW, Sharp Plamsa Cluster air purifier KC-Y45-W, or 30 kilogrammes of rice.

Third prize: last four digits 0977

Choose any one food item from 38 different ones on offer, from a tea blend for the Imperial Hotel to canned crab soup.

Fourth prize: last two digits 52 or 00

Otoshidama stamp set – a fifty yen and an eighty yen stamp, pictured above.

C Gumi Special prize: 27520

50,000 yen’s worth of JTB holiday vouchers. The “C Gumi” is apparently something to do with carbon offest New Year Postcards.

If you have matched any of these, go to your nearest post office before the 26th of July 2010 and either collect the stamps while you wait, or apply for any of the bigger prizes. The full prize line-up can be seen here. I’ve just checked mine and I’ve won two sheets of the stamps above.

One of my New Year resolutions was to stop doing FAIL headlines, but it falls by the wayside with this look from goo Ranking at what things about New Year nengajo postcards give you that FAIL feeling.

Demographics

On the 19th of November 2009 1,166 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 59.9% of the sample were female, 13.4% in their teens, 20.6% in their twenties, 28.2% in their thirties, 23.2% in their forties, 8.3% in their fifties, and 6.3% aged sixty or older.

This is not FAILs on one’s own behalf, but the sinking feeling seeing the sender’s fail.

As my wife has a relatively common family name, but it is spelt with an uncommon combination of kanji characters, name mistakes are par for the course, although she does get a little annoyed if someone gets her given name wrong. I’ve once had the all blank card, and all my postcards this year were all print as I just didn’t feel like adding a few words extra. I also got the unknown postcard this year from (I think) an ex-colleague who I might have invited to my wedding, but I just couldn’t place a face to the name!

If I cared about him, I would have also had a feeling of disappointment when for the second year in a row when my boss sent my postcard to my old address, and even though they will often return incorrectly-addressed postcards before the New Year, he instead handed a card to me (and another person in the office) on the second day at work.
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It’s getting to that time of year when we need to getting our New Year greetings prepared; this recent survey from Macromill Inc on this topic looked at not just the traditional postcards, but also electronic greetings.

Demographics

Between the 20th and 24th of November 2009 500 members of the Macromill monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, although not quite 50:50 throughout each age band. 7.2% were in their teens (between 15 and 19 years old), 17.2% in their twenties, 20.2% in their thirties, 17.2% in their forties, 20.8% in their fifties, and 17.4% in their sixties.

It’s probably just my stinginess, but I’m extremely surprised that in Q1SQ3 there was no answer about “because it’s free” as the reason for sending electronic greetings!

Oh, and my New Year postcards got delivered today. My wife went a bit crazy ordering the cards, so we have Rilakkuma, two styles of Pooh, and Hello Kitty designs…
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