世論 What Japan Thinks
From kimono to keitai; research Japanese facts and figures through translated opinion polls and surveys.



Touch panel interests about half of all Japanese (Jan 6)
Welcome back to normal service from What Japan Thinks, and my apologies again for being offline for so long. We’ll start off the year with a survey connected with one of my most popular themes of 2008, a look with japan.internet.com at goo Research’s 42nd regular monthly survey on mobile upgrade needs, with a question [...]


I’m back from my enforced holiday! (Jan 5)
Hi everyone, my apologies for a second time for the interruption to What Japan Thinks, thanks to a sequence of events that I’ll blog about in detail later. In the meantime, all comments seem to have evaporated into the ether. I will try tonight to reinstate them, but they may not return… Hopefully WJT will be self-destruct [...]


Cellphone straps carried by two in three Japanese (Dec 20)
What a super excuse to promote my favourite purveyor of Japanese tat (and I mean that as a compliment!) through this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Point On Research into cellphone accessories. Demographics On the 11th of December 2008 exactly 1,000 cellphone-carrying members of the Point On Research monitor group (a footnote classified them [...]


Taking work laptops home in Japan (Dec 16)
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 [...]


HD DVD drives owned by almost one in four Japanese (Dec 15)
With the demise of HD DVD in February 2008 as a format for recorded media, ths recent suvery from goo Research reported on by japan.internet.com into video devices showed some surprising results. Demographics Between the 27th and 30th of November 2008 1,081 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.6% of the [...]


Yahoo! Shopping’s most irresistable unusual items of 2008 (Dec 14)
Yahoo! JAPAN recently annouced the results of a number of their “Best of 2008″, and one of the categories was what rare products people just couldn’t resist click through to. Voting was (as far as I understand) open to all registered users of Yahoo! JAPAN. The items were collected from all the Hot Items selected [...]


Top status symbols in Japan (Dec 14)
For this week’s lighter look at opinions, goo Ranking investigated what makes people feel are men’s status symbols, for both men and women. Demographics Between the 24th and 26th of September 2008 1,044 members of the goo Research online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.6% of the sample were male, 5.8% in their teens, 12.7% [...]


Public library web site usage (Dec 13)
Just a very quick translation for today, a look with japan.internet.com at a survey conducted by iBridge into public libraries and the internet. Demographics On the first of December 2008 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.7% of the sample were female, 13.0% in their twenties, 39.0% in their thirties, 33.0% [...]


Yahoo! JAPAN’s 20 most clicked-through headlines of 2008 (Dec 12)
Yahoo! JAPAN recently annouced the results of a number of their “Best of 2008″, and one of the categories was the most clicked-through headline from Yahoo! News. The data was collected from all headlines displayed through Yahoo! NEWS between the 1st of November 2007 and 31st of October 2008. You’ll notice that all of them are [...]


Electric cars interest over one in six Japanese (Dec 12)
I wonder how the fear of impending collapse in a number of the car manufacturers will affect their investments into research and development into alternative power sources. However, this survey from MyVoice into electric cars was conducted before the bottom fell out of the manufacturing business, so such worries are not reflected in the results. Demographics Over [...]