Comment by veidr

I think this is a good article; those really are some of the biggest reasons the Japanese web by and large looks so horrible.

At an HN Tokyo event I once met an American engineer from Rakuten.

Of course we asked him wtf was up with how ugly it looked. He laughed and swore that they did A/B test it against modern designs, but that ugly won.

My wife is Japanese, and she totally prefers shopping on Rakuten's site to say, Amazon. She says, "it is ugly, but it's more convenient to use." That blew my mind, but there it is.