I always found it interesting that Sony swapped the X and O buttons for the western Playstation market. In Japan X (batsu) does mean "back" or "no", whereas elsewhere it is reversed.
I think check-for-yes, x-for-no is a fairly common convention in English as well, just not in tick-box forms. You do see it in feature-comparisons grids a lot, often with the check-mark colored green and the x colored red, to mix in another convention. Example: http://prezi.com/pricing/