For the background, I'm reading the book RTK 1 (from scratch once again, I stopped at 600 kanjis 6 months ago), I know a few things about anime, mangas, and japanese culture through the movies and TV shows but there is one thing, one little thing, that I can't understand: why are japanese websites so "simple"?

Yes, it's a stupid question but I've seen a lot of japanese personal websites who are so simple I want to know why. These sites have at most 2 colors (one for the background, another one for the emphasis of sections), no pictures, no photos, just a few links and some text. And I want to know why! Is it cultural? Are those sites specially made for mobile phones? (which I doubt considering some of those sites talk about computer programming, which I'm doing as my job)

The commercial japanese websites are a little bit more complicated, but they are still simple and clean, which I understand, but personal websites? Does it come from a japanese philosophy not to be a "show-off"?

I'd really like to know, but thanks for reading even if you can't answer

Really? I had the opposite impression.
Just look at one of the most popular websites in Japan:
http://www.rakuten.co.jp/

I always find the websites to be overloaded with colorful images, flash animations(or gif) and "untidy".

Can you give any examples of these "simple" websites?

I'll try to find a few examples of simple sites if I find them. The rakuten web site is the perfect example of the commercial I've seen: made in the 90s and not updated since.

But maybe it's just me and I've seen too few japanese websites, I don't know.

Edit: it seems I was mistaken, a lot of the japanese websites I've found on Google are either commercial (made in the 90s, or have a more "current" design), generated automatically (like blogs, with the same design found on "american" websites), or personal websites (the sites I was talking about, no pictures or anything).

My Google foo is weak, I'll need to work more

Yeah.. a lot of Japanese homepages look like they were built in 2000, but I have no idea why that is the case. Maybe it's just a case of "Keep it simple, stupid"?

Maybe the websites, you've visited are meant to be browsed mostly with mobile phones..?
My impression of a Japanese website is eihter the overly simplistic mobile version or an overly flashy "welcome to teletubbies" -style sites created with outdated techniques.
Not much in the between..

alantin Wrote:Maybe the websites, you've visited are meant to be browsed mostly with mobile phones..?
My impression of a Japanese website is eihter the overly simplistic mobile version or an overly flashy "welcome to teletubbies" -style sites created with outdated techniques.
Not much in the between..

This has also been my experience.
Of the two, hey, I prefer the mobile. Even though it's honestly pretty ugly most of the time.

For some reason most Japanese websites suffer from very bad web design =(

I don't visit Japanese websites all that often, but I get what you mean.

I sometime visit the Japanese Wikipedia, and often time, there are no image on a page when its English counterpart has plenty.

ocircle Wrote:Yeah.. a lot of Japanese homepages look like they were built in 2000

Exactly! What's up with that? Mixi looks good though.

Yes Japanese websites are not on the whole as sexy as English websites, however the other big factor is that google sucks at searching across Japanese sites. A lot of old crappy sites appear in the results.

Apparently yahoo is a lot better at Japanese stuff.

thermal Wrote:Yes Japanese websites are not on the whole as sexy as English websites, however the other big factor is that google sucks at searching across Japanese sites. A lot of old crappy sites appear in the results.

Apparently yahoo is a lot better at Japanese stuff.

I have heard of that as well.

rrrrrray Wrote:

thermal Wrote:Yes Japanese websites are not on the whole as sexy as English websites, however the other big factor is that google sucks at searching across Japanese sites. A lot of old crappy sites appear in the results.

Apparently yahoo is a lot better at Japanese stuff.

I have heard of that as well.

Yeah. When I went to Japan this summer, she used Yahoo all the time. She asked me why used google so much. xD

-edit-
er, whoops. I meant My host sister asked me. XD

90's = http://unkar.jp