[maruhan2]

Korean websites have similar aspects. However, Korean websites are slowly changing to be simpler and more visually appealing. Having experienced from Korea, I would extrapolate that Japanese (or Korean) websites are cluttered not because they believe it is better than non-clutter. It's cluttered because most people there don't have expertise in designing a simple and appealing website. In addition, Asian countries tend to be more focused on following the design of their rivals, and since early design is obviously more focused on information than beauty, people follow that. However, if you give a finished product where one is cluttered with information and the other is simple and visually appealing, I highly doubt that people will prefer the clutter.

[jvkersch]

Korean websites also suffer from the early adapter phenomenon. Many were build when ActiveX controls were the new hip thing and everybody was on the same version of Windows, and same with flash. Add to that that some websites require logging in with government-issued credentials (which is probably not something that you can easily rip out and replace by a nice form) and you can see that there's a lot of early 2000s cruft floating around... I'd be interested in knowing Japanese websites have similar baggage.

I had to look up the results of my Korean language test the other day. This should be as easy as entering your name + test registration number to get one number of info back (your test score). I had to install so many suspicious browser plugins that I ended up downloading a VM just for this.

[yongjik]

Hah, at least they didn't have an anti-VM plugin (yes, there's such a thing) that forces you to install a dozen "security plugins" onto your host OS.