@Matt

You make a great point (of which I had not thought of), most of these sites are fairly content driven. I would be very curious as to see what Japanese designers would consider the best websites as well.

@CountZeero

I have yet to find a good minimalistic Japanese website, which as you mentioned may be a direct indication of their culture. If you know of any good minimalistic websites please share as I would love to see them.

Great idea for a post!
I surf often to Japanes websites looking for Anime and Manga stuff and they are often really cluttered – as some of the examples here are. Although Japanese typography can be really elegant you rarely find a “Minimalist” design, maybe it´s a cultural thing – they are obsessed with packing the maximum possible “content” into a minimum of space -see Tokyo or any of the other megacities in Japan…

Hm, I was hoping for more revelation in style and usability practices, but most of the sites are the same with a translation done. That said you can definitely see the heavy text based nature of the design in some of the comparisons. I think the almost ‘mono-spaced’, detailed nature of Japanese characters makes them prone to this style as it takes so much space. I’d be interested to see what Japanese designers consider the best sites of the day, rather than just the most popular in Japan (because those are usually about the site’s content rather than its design)

Good post though!

@Tim

That is a great question. I would have to say that the most common difference, recognizable without being able to read the Japanese language, would be that the Japanese websites are more times than none scaled back from their American counterparts. For example, WordPress eliminates their entire navigation, Expedia down grades their navigation and features, and CNN makes use of a fixed width.

Also, from what I could tell a lot of the websites originated in Japan are much more text driven than the website originated in America.

Hi Shay,

Interesting idea for a post. What, do you feel, are the common differences between Japanese and American web site layouts and design?