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The Japanese sure seem to like Yahoo!
Maybe Yahoo is the only search engine that does not deliver insane search results when searhing in Japanese??? Anyone with experience that can clarify why Yahoo is big in the Japanese market?

There are some working theories out there, but I think it's mostly a what-you-learn-first issue. When Web users were increasing in number at an exponential rate, it was easy to become dominant as the next-big-thing, but Yahoo! solidified its position in Japan early and Google didn't push very hard on that market until growth had slowed.

The company does not survey the carrier's own shops, which are major players in the Japanese cellphone market. In addition, number three, the Panasonic 830P is an almost one year old phone (last year's winter model) since superceded by two newer Panasonic phones, and the Casio W63CA is similarly an ancient (in Japanese terms) model.

Thus, to anyone who knows about the Japanese mobile phone market (such as anyone who reads my blog) the survey results are obviously biased towards bulk retailers and the people who frequent them rather than to the average Taro who frequents the carrier's own store on the High Street.

They suggest that 7 hours is the minimum in TFA, and I get 5.5 hours on weekdays if I'm lucky. If I tried to move up to the minimum of seven that they recommend, I'd have to face a packed to the gunwales train here in Japan. Indeed, surveys show that almost half of all Japanese get less than six hours shut-eye per night, but if you add back in snoozing on the train (or at meetings, a not uncommon sight) perhaps they manage to break the seven hour barrier?

Here's a recent survey from Japan showing that elementary school kids prefer almost everything else bar the Xbox!

That photo is not of One Seg TV watchers, as the phones are about two year old models and they do not have TV aerials. Next "Yasuko San" - that should be "Yasuko san" most likely; San is not her surname!

Anyway, I'm just bitter that they seem to have nicked all their stats from my website without any credit!

According to a survey on PC video chat at least, the top reason for not getting into it was not liking seeing their own faces on screen! Another survey on mobile phone video calls found a similar percentage of people not keen on faces.

And wrote a short article in my blog:

http://whatjapanthinks.com/2007/09/19/turns-25-but-how-old-are-japanese-emoticons/

So as not to link whore (but karma whore instead...), here goes:

You may have heard the news that 25 years ago on the 19th of October 1982, there was the first recorded use of western smileys on usenet. However, that got me wondering as to how old horizontal Japanese emoticons were. With a little investigation, I came across this Japanese page on the evolution of smiley marks in Japan. I'll now present a summary translation of this history of the Japanese emoticon.

First up is a nuclear scientist claiming to have invented (~_~) and others round about the same time as ASCII Net (a Japanese online service) started on the first of May 1985, although he says he wasn't the first, he was just following the patterns of others.

Next up was someone claiming that when he attended Hokkaido University the first Japanese emoticon he saw was from Master Koala with (^O^) in fj.jokes, inspiring him to invent the following:

(^.^) - laughing
(;.;) - crying
(-.-) - sleeping, shocked
(_ _) - apologising, lowering one's head
; - sweat mark, eg (^.^;)
* - red-faced, eg *^.^*

These were coined between May and July of 1988 and used on JUNET, the Japanese University Network.

Now, we get to a usenet post from January 13 1998, indirectly archived by Google Groups (but with broken encoding). In the message we can see the following marks:

(^O^) - Master Koala smiling
(-O-) - Master Koala sleeping
(*O*) - Master Koala shocked
(@O@) - Master Koala looking sideways
(=O=) - Master Koala squinting through narrowed eyes
(>O<) - Master Koala surprised
(dOb) - Master Koala neutral

Now we get a very interesting post, suggesting that the classic (^_^) was invented in Japan, but perhaps not by a Japanese. A Kim Tong Ho claims that in the first half of 1986 he signed posts to ASCII Net with the above-mentioned emoticon, with one example from 20th of June 1986. However, he doesn't have confidence to claim to be the very first person to come up with a Japanese emoticon that doesn't require head-tilting to read. Around the same time a person with the handle 'binbou' (the nuclear scientist mentioned above) used (~_~), but as to who was first, it is rather difficult to say.

So, there we have it; the Japanese emoticon is at least 21 years and a few months old, perhaps even 22 and a bit years old.

I reported on a survey showing that the penetration of Linux in the public sector was virtually nil, and in addition two months ago office suites meant MS Office in both the private and public sectors.

I reported on a survey showing that the penetration of Linux in the public sector was virtually nil, and in addition two months ago office suites meant MS Office in both the private and public sectors.

A survey conducted just one month ago showed that barely one percent of public sector employees used Linux, despite the Japan Information-technology Promotion Agency spending untold millions on feasibility studies over the last two or more years.

those without internet (ie. those who weren't part of the sampling frame, and those who are very unlikely to pirate) weren't even asked

I've just hacked up a quick plugin that adds rel nofollow to all Wikipedia links!

No they don't.

Funnily enough, I just published an article in my blog that shows that only 3% of Japanese blog readers like watching threads crash and burn.

Oh, and my host seems to be down, so don't be surprised if that link doesn't take you anywhere.

(And in another survey, grannies have the highest ownership percentage of DSes.)

(And in another survey, grannies have the highest ownership percentage of DSes.)

In addition, over a quarter of these gamers said they wanted DVD (or HD-DVD, Blu-Ray or whatever) playback in their console. However, they weren't questioned about the price point for a PS3, so I don't know if they would change their tune once they saw the cost!

At least from a speaking and listening point of view, which is what you want if you are going to just watch anime. Most of the verbs and nouns are regular, the grammar is not often too complex, pronounciation is straightforward on the whole, etc. It only gets hard when you need to master reading and writing, or when you need to understand the cultural issues behind the language, which is not a thing a course is going to teach you very well.

I'm sure this thread will get lots of references to things like Tae Kim's grammar guide or Heisig's book, both of which have as many rabid fans as an average Linux distribution, although I personally don't rate either very highly.

My chosen route to polish my Japanese skills is my blog, which in fact has a related entry about why people learn Japanese, although "To understand comics and cartoons" was not one of the reasons given.

According to a survey I translated a couple of months back, in Japan amongst the people surveyed (who would tend to be heavy phone users, due to the survey methodology) almost 40% played games regularly, and amongst these gamers, over 40% paid to download games, and over 40% downloaded at least one game a month.

...when it comes to fine, or even poor, wine. They still get a collective stiffie when Beaujolais Day comes around, and believe chilled is not an unusual way of serving normal non-Beaujolais reds.

It really was pointless for MS to try to rush this system out for Christmas in Japan

Regardless of what the Japanese get up to over Christmas and the New Year, the start of December sees most people getting a winter bonus, with the average this year being somewhere around 850,000 yen, or around US$7,000, so it makes sense to try to get the XBox out at the start of December.

rule #1a is if you cannot get your article submitted once (or even twice...) include lots of gratuitous links to your website in any posts you might make here.

I suppose repeating the same tactic in a second post would move me into the unethical category?

rule #1a is if you cannot get your article submitted once (or even twice...) include lots of gratuitous links to your website in any posts you might make here.

I suppose repeating the same tactic in a second post would move me into the unethical category?

rule #1a is if you cannot get your article submitted once (or even twice...) include lots of gratuitous links to your website in any posts you might make here.

I suppose repeating the same tactic in a second post would move me into the unethical category?

rule #1a is if you cannot get your article submitted once (or even twice...) include lots of gratuitous links to your website in any posts you might make here.

I suppose repeating the same tactic in a second post would move me into the unethical category?

rule #1a is if you cannot get your article submitted once (or even twice...) include lots of gratuitous links to your website in any posts you might make here.

I suppose repeating the same tactic in a second post would move me into the unethical category?

rule #1a is if you cannot get your article submitted once (or even twice...) include lots of gratuitous links to your website in any posts you might make here.

I suppose repeating the same tactic in a second post would move me into the unethical category?

rule #1a is if you cannot get your article submitted once (or even twice...) include lots of gratuitous links to your website in any posts you might make here.

I suppose repeating the same tactic in a second post would move me into the unethical category?

rule #1a is if you cannot get your article submitted once (or even twice...) include lots of gratuitous links to your website in any posts you might make here.

rule #2 is deliberately seeding MSN and Yahoo! (Google is immune) with keyword-laden articles - I once managed to accidentally (yeah right!) end up as the top site for "Japanese teen sex" on both these engines, but that's another story.

rule #1a is if you cannot get your article submitted once (or even twice...) include lots of gratuitous links to your website in any posts you might make here.

rule #2 is deliberately seeding MSN and Yahoo! (Google is immune) with keyword-laden articles - I once managed to accidentally (yeah right!) end up as the top site for "Japanese teen sex" on both these engines, but that's another story.

rule #1a is if you cannot get your article submitted once (or even twice...) include lots of gratuitous links to your website in any posts you might make here.

rule #2 is deliberately seeding MSN and Yahoo! (Google is immune) with keyword-laden articles - I once managed to accidentally (yeah right!) end up as the top site for "Japanese teen sex" on both these engines, but that's another story.

rule #1a is if you cannot get your article submitted once (or even twice...) include lots of gratuitous links to your website in any posts you might make here.

rule #2 is deliberately seeding MSN and Yahoo! (Google is immune) with keyword-laden articles - I once managed to accidentally (yeah right!) end up as the top site for "Japanese teen sex" on both these engines, but that's another story.