I hate that shit too! They use Excel for the most pointless reasons. I've gotten all kinds of documents as Excel spreadsheets when a simple word document would have sufficed.
It might be too much of a stretch, but maybe this has something to do with so much time spent in childhood writing on 原稿用紙 making Japanese people prefer "grid-like" organization.
This and the fact that pictgraphical might be contributing relative acceptance of more texts.
This is actually funny, as I was constantly making jokes in the past with my peers, where western people write very comprehensive documents with too much information, that Japanese counterpart often won't bother reading.
Yeah, I've run into that problem in the past. I have to make a conscious effort to simplify anything I write (or say) in English in order to ensure that Japanese people understand it. They usually won't tell me if they don't understand something, whereas I'm the opposite when it comes to Japanese, so that I can optimize my language learning.
Why do you think that is? Because I was raised to always ask questions and learn what you don't understand. I have never really "studied" with a Japanese friend or colleague so I can't say I've ever had the same experience.
0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)#Chi... (the Chinese explanation also largely applies to Japan)