More than 90 percent of respondents to The Japan Times Readership Survey conducted in July rated our paper's news coverage favorably, both domestic and foreign.

Some 74 percent rated our domestic news coverage "good" and 17 percent "excellent." For international news coverage, 59 percent responded that it was "good" while 29 percent replied "excellent."

However, about 10 percent of the respondents said they are not satisfied with our news coverage -- 10.6 percent were not satisfied with the foreign news coverage and 7.5 percent were not satisfied with domestic news coverage.

The survey was conducted by newspaper cutout on July 12 and 16, and on The Japan Times Online Web site from July 12 through the end of the month. Forty-three percent of the 1,020 respondents replied via the Internet.

Of the total, 550 were non-Japanese of 46 different nationalities and 470 were Japanese, and accounted for some 65 percent of all respondents.

Japanese readers accounted for 46 percent of all respondents. Americans comprised the largest chunk of foreign readers, at 187 or about 18 percent, of the total. They were followed by readers from Britain, Canada, Australia, India, Germany, the Philippines, New Zealand, France and Malaysia, ranging in their shares from 5.6 to 1 percent.

Some 60 percent of all responses came from readers living in Tokyo and the three prefectures surrounding it -- Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba. Responses from the Kinki and the Chubu-Hokuriku regions were nearly split at 12.3 percent and 12.6 percent, respectively.

The survey was conducted to learn about readers of The Japan Times, what they are looking for and their opinions of the newspaper, in order to better serve them.

We asked readers their opinions of new pages and columns introduced since the beginning of the year, especially in April.

Among the new series of features and interviews, such as "Staging a Comeback," "International Rationale" and "Weekend Wisdom," all were received favorably, with 86 percent of the respondents marking them as "interesting" or "OK."

As for the main new sections, some 80 percent of the respondents had favorable reactions. Almost 90 percent of them either approved positively or marked as "interesting" the new Sunday TimeOut and the Observer sections, and more than 80 percent said the TimeOut Re:View and the American Perspectives were "interesting" or "OK."

The largest share of readers of domestic news replied that they enjoy human interest stories over politics or business. Some 49 percent said they enjoy human interest stories most, followed by 29 percent favoring politics and 22 percent favoring business news.

But foreign news readers enjoy human interest issues and politics almost equally, with 40 percent favoring human interest and 39 percent political issues.

The respondents also said they want to read about the Asia-Pacific region, North America and Europe, almost equally, but Asia-Pacific news is more sought after than other regions' news.

Interesting to note is that a small but significant number of foreign respondents -- 40 -- commented strongly to the effect that there is too much U.S. focus, too many U.S. news and features, too much U.S. bias, and too much American perspective in the Japan Times coverage.

The comments come from not only non-American readers -- Australians, Canadians, Belgians, Germans, French, Swiss, Dutch, Irish, Swedish, and British -- but also from American readers.

Japan Times editors take note of their useful opinions.

In the past several years, we have been trying to increase coverage of non-American issues and have begun using Agence France Press and Observer services to put in more European perspectives, in addition to the Associated Press, Reuters, and Los Angeles Times/Washington Post services, as well as Kyodo News and Jiji Press. We will further try to present a variety of perspectives and more news about Asia, Africa, and other regions.

Seventy-five percent approved of our editorials -- some 22 percent rating them as "excellent" and 53 percent calling them "good," while 21 percent marked them "average."

Some 25 percent said they want to read about Japanese social issues in our Opinion pages, followed by 15 percent wishing to read about foreign social issues, and 13 percent looking for Japanese business and economics issues.

Another interesting result of the survey is that almost 70 percent of the respondents said that they do not want more comics, although The Japan Times carries fewer than its rival papers.

Of the three daily comics, Dilbert shared the most popular comics' position with Garfield, but among Sunday's cartoons, Dilbert took the most votes with 21.5 percent.

Of those who replied that they read sports pages, over 80 percent rated highly our sports coverage -- 66 percent rating it "good' and 18 percent "excellent."

They said they enjoy baseball (29 percent) and soccer news (20 percent) the most. At the same time, 125 respondents said they don't read the sports section or that there are too many sports pages.

The survey also found that 70 percent of the respondents want more community-oriented information and news and practical information for foreigners living in Japan. In this regard, almost 74 percent said they enjoy the Weekend/People page.

Other survey findings:

Respondents were aged between 11 and 89, with the 30- to 39-year-old group accounting for 28 percent, the 20- to 29-year-olds and 40- to 49-year-olds each taking a 19 percent share, and the 50- to 59-year-olds 16 percent.

Of the foreign respondents, those who have lived in Japan for two years make the largest share of 50 people, and the people who have lived here less than five years comprised 43 percent.

Some 60 percent read The Japan Times at home, followed by 16 percent each of those who read the paper at their office or while commuting.

More than 57 percent spend 30 to 60 minutes reading The Japan Times, with 29 percent spending less than 30 minutes.

Respondents who have been subscribing to The Japan Times for between one and five years accounted for 30 percent, the largest share, while those who have been subscribers for less than one year made up 24 percent. Subscribers of more than 20 years accounted for 16 percent, and those of five to 10 years 17 percent.

Some 73 percent of Japanese respondents said their major reason for reading The Japan Times is studying English or maintaining their English ability.

Teachers accounted for the largest share of respondents at 26 percent, followed by company employees' at 17 percent and company executives at 11 percent. Students, at 7 percent, and housewives, at 6 percent, comprised the other major categories of readers. Some 20 percent of respondents have said they had "other" jobs, which included researchers, journalists and editors, lawyers and doctors, and other professional jobs.

Nearly 63 percent said they have never visited the Japan Times Web site. Of those who have visited the site, only 4.4 percent said they visit the site every day.

We have carefully studied and analyzed the results of the survey, and hope to make the most use of them to further improve our paper and better serve our readers.

We would like to express our thanks for your kind cooperation.