In most places, the blogosphere offers an alternative to the mainstream media where people can go for a taste of the unvarnished truth. But not in Japan.

Most bloggers here tend to trust what companies write about their products, and take their press releases at face value.

Nearly 63 percent of Japanese who keep blogs consider corporate press releases to be trustworthy sources of information, compared with fewer than five percent of English-speaking Americans, Canadians and Europeans, it said.

In contrast, almost two-thirds of English-language bloggers who write about products believe other blogs are reliable sources, a view shared by 15 percent in Japan, said the joint research by public relations agency Edelman and blog search engine Technorati.

“Japanese bloggers have high trust in ‘official’ information from corporations including news releases,” the study said. “Japanese companies have been using such one-way ‘monologue’ methods.”

The main reason Japanese get into blogging?

For Japanese bloggers, the top motivation to blog was to “create a record of my thoughts,” with 28.2 percent listing it as their primary reason.