The Beautiful Art of Japanese Web Design

I'm not impressed by Flash splash pages. The few genuinely beautiful ones like Karimoku employ Flash for a few cheap (and oddly ugly) effects. The actual page designs could be managed in HTML.

Others, like DyDo Drink, are visually derivative to the point of being rather retro (and obnoxious when navigation starts happening due to mouse-overs).

http://hillspost.yubin-nenga.jp/ Did you want to wait approximately 15 seconds for a splashy animation to load, so you can eventually see the home page? We hope so, because you will!

http://www.ishiyamasenko.co.jp/ I've put fine white text over a collection of photos. In some cases, those photos offer virtually no contrast at all. Good luck using it when the the nav is white on cream or white on white! And since it's flash, you can't even highlight it to get some contrast.

http://www.swfc-shanghai.com/ Loading... you clicked on something? Loading.... In fact our site is so slow that we've added a popup that asks you if you want a simpler version (for people who are in a hurry). unfortunately, the simpler version uses a really tiny, light font that's incredibly hard to read. Wondering why it can take (literally) 46.02 seconds to render the media center page? it's because we download 14 zip files full of graphics before we show you the content. (seriously. they do.)

http://moonlinx.jp/special_issue/003/ Loading... no, you can't do anything until it's done loading... Also, once in an article, we use a self-hiding nav-bar, that defies standard conventions.

http://go-jimbou.info/ 3.9 megabytes, and about 2 seconds of delay until you get to the actual front page. But at least once it loads, it's a clearly organized site that doesn't require thought to navigate.

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I'll stop there, but much of this web design is antithetical to the businesses at hand, or just poorly designed when looked at as anything other than 'art', and realistically speaking, they're supposed to be functional pieces.

Signed, an unappreciative american heathen.