Japan's ongoing indifference to the Twitter micro-blogging service is well-documented. That said, you can never have enough statistics.

A new survey conducted by the CLUB BBQ mail forwarding service revealed new delicious percentages telling us just how little Japan cares about Twitter. Only 30% of respondents were aware of the service (versus 16% on a different survey), with a usage rate of 6.5% (versus 2.6%). 84% of respondents liked the idea that some government offices in Aomori had begun using the service to help broadcast information, if only for the tiny portion that actually used it.

This is hardly surprising, but there were some other interesting figures. Turns out only half of respondents had ever viewed a blog. Considering that Japan has some of the fastest net service in the world, where are the Japanese going when they're online?

That said, if Japan ever gets around to tweeting, I'd think they would want to use it the way I do: as a micro-scale subsitute for an RSS feed. 18% said that the people they might follow would be those with similar interests. That works for me. The people I follow on twitter are members of the Japanator, Tomopop and Destructoid communties. At least they're not following Ashton Kutcher.