habits

Mucky mobiles

kamaboko keitai cell phone strap

Here’s another of these surveys that I find particularly interesting, looking at perhaps rather trivial matters, but giving answers that I hope one day may prove useful, although where exactly, I just don’t know! This time it was japan.internet.com reporting on a survey by goo Research into mobile phones in general, but in this report they chose to focus on dirty screens on said mobiles.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 15th of October 2007 1,092 members of goo Research’s online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample was male, 17.5% in their teens, 19.8% in their twenties, 17.2% in their thirties, 17.6% in their forties, 17.0% in their fifties, and 10.9% in their sixties.

This survey coincided with the release of a new range of mobile phone screen cleaning mascots from Strapya (very reasonable prices and shipping costs; help What Japan Thinks by buying your cuddly toys through the link above), so join the 10% or so of Japanese cell phone users with cute cleaners! I personally have a Monokuro Boo cubic pig cuddly cleaner on my phone, but I actually just wipe on my sleeve.
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By Ken Y-N, ago

What Japanese wish their spouses would quit doing

Following up, I suppose, on a recent ranking survey regarding what were the basic dealbreakers for potential spouses, goo Rankings came up with another entertaining survey looking at what husbands’ bad habits wives want to tell them to fix, but just can’t, and vice versa. The survey was conducted between the 28th and 30th of August 2007.

My wife informs me that she has no bad habits that I should ask her to fix (now that’s a bad habit that doesn’t feature on the list!), but my two main bad habits also don’t feature on the list, namely adjusting the lay of the land, as it were, and noxious gas emissions.

I suppose that number 15 for men and 18 for women is shorthand for a lack of rumpy-pumpy.
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By Ken Y-N, ago

Habits you just can’t break

As part of DIMSDRIVE Research’s 92nd Ranking Survey, towards the end of August they asked members of their internet monitor group which habits they want to break, but just can’t manage to. They got 5,595 responses, with 2,874, or 51.4% of the sample male.

This is a slightly higher male to female ratio than usual for DIMSDRIVE, so perhaps that suggests men have more bad habits?

I’d love to see a survey on what habits foreigners wish Japanese would quit! I’d put slurping noodles and sniffing rather than blowing one’s nose at the top of the list.
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By Ken Y-N, ago

Two-fifth of Japanese habitually use vibrators

Do you use the vibrator mode for incoming calls? graph of japanese opinionOn their phones, I hasten to add. japan.internet.com published this much less interesting than it seems fact as part of its report on a survey by Cross Marketing Inc into the use of paid contents on mobile phones. They interviewed 300 mobile phone users by means of a private internet survey; exactly half of the sample was male, and 20.0% were in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

I personally only use the buzzer in manner mode, but my phone is in such a mode all day most days. Ah, I’d better explain that manner mode is a 和製英語, wasei eigo, or Japanese-English expression that means silent mode, turning off all audible ringers. A pet hate of mine is people who leave the keyboard beep on!

Q1: At what volume do you usually set your ring tones to? (Sample size=300)

Maximum volume 17.0%
High volume 18.3%
Medium volume 31.7%
Low volume 14.0%
Silent mode 17.7%
Step-up volume 1.3%
Step-down volume 0.0%

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By Ken Y-N, ago

Mobile phone ease of use

How many per-caller ring tones do you use? graph of japanese opinionContinuing the recent series of looking at various habits, this time NEPRO JAPAN weighed in with a survey titled “The ease of use of mobile phones”, although the survey looks more at usage habits. They surveyed 4,206 people by means of a public questionnaire available through the iMode, Vodafone live! and EZweb mobile phone sites, for just under a day over the 10th and 11th of April. The self-selecting demographics were 60% female, 3% in their teens, 38% in their twenties, 42% in their thirties, and 17% forty or older. Although this may seem a youth-biased group, the young user is the core demographic they are targetting.

It’s interesting in Q5 that almost half the respondents want to try out a Panasonic phone, versus two in five for Sharp; sales figures suggest that Sharp are the top sellers of phones, but I believe this is because Sharp also sell Vodafone and au-branded phones whereas Panasonic are exclusively DoCoMo.
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By Ken Y-N, ago

Mobile phone privacy

Anyone ever peeked at your phone's mail, call history, etc? graph of japanese opinionjapan.internet.com, in conjuction with Cross Marketing, recently investigated mobile phone privacy. They sampled 150 men and 150 women, 16.6% aged 18 or 19, 16.6% in their twenties, and so on up to 16.6% in their sixties.

Note that over three times as many people take their mobiles into public toilets than into their toilet at home. I wonder what is hidden behind that statistic! Im also rather surprised to see that less than a third of all user employ any security locks on their phone; note almost all phones have lock features what require a four digit code to open them. Some of the more advanced phones go as far as having a fingerprint reader that may be used to unlock the device.
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By Ken Y-N, ago

PCs part of the waking routine

japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing, conducted an internet-based survey amongst 300 internet users, 50.3% female, to see what internet habits they had. 16.7% of the sample was aged 18 or 19, and 16.6% were from each of the other decades of life from the twenties to the sixties. I’m not sure how exactly work computers are suppposed to figure in this survey.

I think the results on SNS usage are particularly interesting – I’ve felt to some degree that SNSs are basically a more private form of blogging, so I’d love to see a more detailed survey on why people participate in SNS, or write blogs for that matter!

Personally, on the whole I switch on my home PC in the late evening (say past 9pm or so), and with this blog requiring rather a lot of work, I have little time for other activities bar mail.
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By Ken Y-N, ago

PCs part of the waking routine

japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing, conducted an internet-based survey amongst 300 internet users, 50.3% female, to see what internet habits they had. 16.7% of the sample was aged 18 or 19, and 16.6% were from each of the other decades of life from the twenties to the sixties. I’m not sure how exactly work computers are suppposed to figure in this survey.

I think the results on SNS usage are particularly interesting – I’ve felt to some degree that SNSs are basically a more private form of blogging, so I’d love to see a more detailed survey on why people participate in SNS, or write blogs for that matter!

Personally, on the whole I switch on my home PC in the late evening (say past 9pm or so), and with this blog requiring rather a lot of work, I have little time for other activities bar mail.
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By Ken Y-N, ago

Mobile smilies ヽ(*^▽^*)ノ

Do you use smilies (kaomoji) when writing mobile phone email? graph of japanese opinionContinuing their recent series of interesting habits that people have around technology, japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing Inc, carried out an internet-based survey to see what email habits people had. They interviewed 300 people from up and down Japan, exactly fifty-fifty male and female, with 16.6% of the sample aged either 18 or 19, and a similar 16.6% aged in each of decades of life from the twenties to the sixties.

Just about all Japanese mobile phones come with graphic smilies (Vodafone even has animated ones, I believe), pre-registered set phrases that include smilies, and smilies in their input conversion dictionaries. For instance, if you type in かお, kao, face, then select the covert to kanji option, as well as the expected kanji é¡”, most mobile phones will also present a list of smilies to choose from. Note that this option is also available in Windows – if you have the Japanese IME, select the properties page for the Japanese input method, go to the “Dictionary” tab, and activate the “Microsoft IME Spoken Language/Emoticon Dictionary”.

I do use smilies, or 顔文字, kaomoji, literally “face characters”, a lot in mail, although I usually use the built-in graphics rather than choosing ASCII (and non-ASCII, as is often the case) art. However, as a signature I occasionally do use the Greek characters κεπ.
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By Ken Y-N, ago