A Rant About the Japanese Internet

If I had to see it, then you have to see it too. I accept no responsibility for any part of your brain that peeled away and died while enjoying this video.
Stock media sourced from Pexels and Wikimedia Commons.
Twitter: / yozora_blues

[@summerjp1997]

I think there is one fallacy to this argument. And that is 'Cultural Psychology', most of the time, East Asian Websites, Videos, cultural goods are packed with information because east asians are used to have holistic way of processing information, rather than individual focused way of looking at things. The websites were never made for foreigners, they were made for the Japanese, or in a broader context, east asians.

[@adam-k]

Nope. Holistic means look at things in interconnected ways. There is nothing holistic in dunking a thousand product with shitty colors and unreadable information on a page. That is not what holistic means. A Japanese garden is a holistic approach to gardening. Feng shui is a holistic approach to environmental design. There is nothing holistic in these webpages. If you disagree you have to point out the interconnected parts on these webpages and prove that they are more interconnected than western webpages. Just look at the difference between Japanese fashion (traditional or modern) and Japanese websites. in fashion or art they are perfectly capable of choosing colors that harmonize and pleasing to both japanese and western eyes. On the websites they go with flat harsh colors (red yellow blue) that goes against everything a thousand years of Japanese design says about colors.

[@summerjp1997]

@@adam-k kzbin.info/www/bejne/haHcXoagebpji7s This video will answer your questions :)

[@fnorgen]

The thing is though, I've gotten so thoroughly fed up with typical, overly sleek, template based, "professional", modern web design, that I actually find these chaotic, archaic sites rather charming. They may not be designed for humans, but they were definitely designed by humans. Humans who didn't know/care about all the "rules" you're supposed to follow, and end up creating something interesting and unique. There are so many modern sites that feel like they're just wasting my screen space with giant UI elements, while presenting hardly any information. The most egregious example was a driver download page, that had med scrolling through 4 screens worth of generic animated garbage and adds for a 10 year old motherboard I obviously already owned, all blown up to a comical size to fit my monitor. And then finally I found the actual download link hidden in the bottom left corner of the page. It's as though the designer specifically went out of their way to waste my time! Often I get the feeling that these sites were designed with mobile in mind, but often the mobile interface turns out to be even worse!

[@mookiestewart3776]

Bro I don’t care about the design, I’m looking for a specific item or piece of information . Just give me what I want and give it to me EFFICIENTLY. I don’t have all day to sit and read your website that looks like it was designed by a 15 year old in 2005

[@Sigma6987]

I once read the sentence "Japan has been stuck in the year 2000 for the last 40 years" and I couldn't agree more until watching this.

[@korakys]

When I went to Japan the term I came up with was "old future". It was as if the future had arrived a while ago but now through neglect it was decaying.

[@swoop839]

@@korakys you should check out why this is with cyntha zhou's video on how we process information based on culture its pretty cool

[@jktech2117]

the year 2000 was better lol, stuff had more personality back then

[@lualdi8674]

So... they have been stuck in the 2000's since the 80's? Are you referring to futuristic media too?

[@Weegeeguy208]

more information-dense doesn't necessarily imply worse- which i know you went on to say in the video, but it seems that you lean more in favor of the late 2010s mobile-friendly way of doing web design. this makes sense, it's a little easier on the eyes- especially if it's what you're used to looking at. it's certainly less cluttered. coming from the west, i kind of find the philosophy of presenting as much information as possible up front refreshing. part of me hopes we can find a happy middle ground perhaps

[@burprobrox9134]

People must like these designs or they wouldn’t make them. Why is a 90% empty space “correct”?

[@yozora_blues]

Therein lies the mystery!

[@JonatasAdoM]

Beats ads, I'll say that

[@mookiestewart3776]

That’s not how things work in Japan lol. It’s not that people like them the old farts simply don’t want to change the structure

[@Jombo1]

I must be in the minority of people that prefer super dense websites. Maybe its partly nostalgia.

[@think2positive]

you are not the only one! i stumbeld upon this video and all i see is the internet i miss wile the commentator seems to praise everything i hate about the modern internet. i'm highly confused.

[@Phillydreaming]

right here. the internet was way more fun when it looked like this worldwide. i personally use yahoo japan as my email and search as well because it looks better.

[@Teknoify]

Yeah, and it feels same like frutiger aero theme

[@xxwoman]

same, I prefer them

[@lukepapapetrou1234]

I lost it at "digital Chernobyl" 🤣

[@theotaylor-george2638]

This channel is so amazing, genuinly really funny but also quite intresting with good topics, cant wait for the next vid!

[@yozora_blues]

Thanks Theo. Work has begun!

[@neppy999]

As with many problems in Japan, the reason nothing is being done is that everyone has this "well, I don't like it, but that's just the way things are" attitude.

[@derpderpson2188]

The stock footage shopping lady at 2:21 is holding an annual pass for the US federal public land system. You can see the hole they punch in the month it's sold and the signature space on the bottom. Did nobody on set have a credit card to hand her?

[@zakarylittle6767]

legend

[@ingrato]

I love your videos SO MUCH

[@brandonp6419]

Great video! Intresting topic. 👍

[@drductape]

fantastic video - I actually kinda love the cramped, text heavy design of these websites from an aesthetic standpoint but I can definitely see how it could be difficult practically. Still, very informative and enjoyable vid, subbed

[@yozora_blues]

Thank you!

[@higgsbonbon]

"old men ruin everything" seems to be a repeating pattern throughout human history.

[@thomasthuyaaung]

I like the style of your videos. Please do more.

[@klabence]

One reason for the information-dense websites, is well culture. It's not just Japanese websites packed tot he brim, it's Korean and Chinese too. Just look up bilibili or qq for example. Asians are just simply better at processing information. Just look at their capital cities of today! Packed to the brim!

[@cadestrathern1260]

Ok bro sure

[@6zz]

Finally someone talked about it I was curious and typed my question in the search bar in yt and your video first one comes up and i think it's the only English speaker who talked about it.

[@yuinoxx]

Eventhough you titled the video as a rant, your narration is so calm funny blue humour, cool vid :) -is this made for humans? 2:45 -this is a digital chernobyl 4:35 -bonus hoverpod looks like bumper car in the pool/ocean 9:55 It seems Chinese, SKorean and Japan's internet are more or less similar. It's cool to see the trend of new websites are slowly changing.

[@maxt1846]

Wow, man, amazing job, keep on doing videos

[@funkygecko]

An interesting and unique topic AND the video is well made as well? Awesome stuff dude!

[@yozora_blues]

Thank you, much appreciated!

[@pirxism]

This is a great channel, keep up the good work!

[@yozora_blues]

Thanks, will do!

[@jorgvillger3591]

I used to work with text as designer and I did Arabic and Hebrew which bring me a lot of pain, but nothing could compare with Japanese - I made 60 page magazine in that language... I was crying seriously, you just can't make proper good looking text in Japanese mainly because of 3 alphabets mixed together the space between characters is jumping like a mad horse. I love to make texts in Chinese however, everything looks nice, short and straight since hieroglyphs close to each other and text is shorter in length, while Japanese is totally unpredictable, when you translate from English for example text could be much longer giving a lot of pain in putting it in order.

[@KogaTM87]

the thing that might fascinate me the most is that there are more than one battery vending machines in Kyoto. I encountered (a notably less derelict) one when I was there a few years back. Not particularly close to any major tourist hot spots, just at a random street corner...

[@zxxtlz]

Cool underrated video, hope it blows up, its an interesting topic

[@yozora_blues]

Thank you!

[@praveenmarkandu]

"Digital chernobyl" is my new favourite line. Gonna steal that.

[@rebekahjohnson5940]

This is interesting and very useful to me, as I just graduated from college with a degree in web design.

[@think2positive]

that "modern deisign" you talk about? i LOATH IT. i hate that seemingly everyone does it. if clutterd is the alternative sign me the fook up!

[@dj_buttmachine]

There are points where I don't fully agree- the FFXIV website looks fine to me, and I generally prefer having the info upfront instead of any minimalist layout- but overall oh my god yes, there are so many Japanese websites that go way too far with that. Information written out in images of text crammed together everywhere, deep webs of nested menus to get around, and some very vintage layouts abound. I'd always wondered if it was only intimidating because my Japanese is still rather questionable and Yomichan doesn't work on images, so I'm glad to hear someone else say it. Regardless of whether the language is set to English or Japanese I tend to have much less trouble navigating Western retail sites than anything specific to Japan.

[@arahman56]

Honestly, swing and a miss for showing the frontpage (meant as an advertisement) and not the *Mogstation*. And to thing its actually a step up from XI...

[@HlfEtnBread]

this video is so well made yet this channel is so underrated

[@ericmackrodt9441]

The Japanese Internet is beautiful, it reminds me of the Web 1.0. The Western Internet is so boring these days.

[@mcbmghome]

Excellent video

[@RazorBeamz]

So much for Kono Taro doing a good job. That aged poorly lol.

[@MrJekyllDrHyde1]

I am sure, there is a Japanese video making fun of how ugly/empty non-Japanese websites are.

[@mookiestewart3776]

Actually as younger people gain more power in Japan their websites are beginning to look more like ours because , get this, it’s far more efficient at conveying information. The reason so many Japanese websites still look like some shit from 2001 is because the people making decisions are old as fuck for the most part.

[@lilcomment1946]

Won’t ever happen, keep dreaming weeb

[@Jixxor]

God I love your content. Stumbled upon your channel by chance on reddit where someone shared your rant on Traffic Cones and now I'm sad there are only a hand full of videos. Hoping to see more coming, easiest subscribe in months.

[@yozora_blues]

Thanks Chris, more to come!

[@miragj]

I feel like bad website design is a universal problem, plenty prevalent in the west too, and this video is being a bit unfair by calling out Japan. The current (western?) design trend of having lots of white space is just that: a design trend. Lots of whitespace does not mean it's designed well -- you can do that, and still have a badly designed website. Trends change over time, trends vary regionally, trends vary demographically. If the way they do it in Japan works for Japan, then they're doing it right. A good example of a recent design trend (in the west, at least) that is neither bad nor good but can be especially bad when done poorly on websites and apps is the flat design trend. Look here on youtube for examples: the subscribe button, the upvote button, etc etc are all very flat pill shapes some of which with only very subtle coloring to differentiate them from the background, and the cancel button for the comment that I'm currently writing is just text with no surrounding shape to indicate it's a button at all (except for when you mouseover it). I've seen some flat website and app designs where I literally could not tell what could be clicked on because everything just looked like text, and some don't even have mouseover color changes so its even harder. I seem to remember some of Microsofts early (or maybe still current?) flat designs being particularly egregious in this respect, and that's Microsoft! Good design (or anything, not just websites) is about more than just how it looks; it's about how it works, and the visual aspect of that is just one interrelated part of it (and ALL the parts of design are interrelated -- form follows function AND function follows form).

[@foaly8]

Why didn’t you mention zenkaku T_T and no-paste-allowed input fields.

[@020baby]

ngl i need the link to that gyoja goya website

[@ryokomeronpanwww]

I don't know, hanko sites seems pretty comfy, you see any type of hanko that you might want right away at first page with examples on pictures, no need to dig into like in western-type sites where someone "Chosen" what is "Necessary" for you to see on main page. IMO, of course. 5:14 - Try to start BestBuy from Japan, lmao.

[@whitestguyuknow]

8:10 he even looks like an old grandpa/uncle that would forget everything electrical [

[@foaly8]

Subbed for avgn reference

[@ddmozz]

I actually like the stuffed look. "Negative space" is boring and wasteful.

[@djrydak]

Nice avg reference

[@livejamie]

Information density in Asian languages is a subject I've given talks on. I work in Video Games, but the findings should be comparable across industries, especially web design. The answer lies in our cultures' differences in our approach to language. Asian languages are complex, compact, and dense; you can't read a newspaper fluently until 10-13. There's an expected level of information density when consuming any media. So if you include a lot of white space, it's seen as both suboptimal and even untrustworthy. It's a fascinating problem as a designer to walk the edge of what you know to be good design while still trying to appeal to cultural norms. I'd be happy to dive in deeper if people have questions.

[@longiusaescius2537]

@Jamie Martin Can you make a video about it? I wish we still did websites like it in Anglophone countries

[@slightlyaboveaveragebutaverage]

Modern web design sucks. This is one of the few "stuck in the past" things that Japan does right.

[@inkh-su]

Sub'd :3

[@jaythompson5102]

I always thought if I lived in Japan it would be Kyoto. I went hiking around parts of the city and I loved the chill small town vibe.

[@jktech2117]

modern clean flat designs suck, it is lazy, soulless and boring. as a western i like japanese designs more due to the absurd amount of personality they have. the internet in the 90s and 2000s just by seeing the theme of the front page and the background of the site you knew what the site was about.. it screamed its content full of personality, now look at websites nowdays, you need to have a context of it to know what it is about. you need to find the information instead of information finding you. in the end modern design even if is simple and cleaner it is less intuitive due to lack of context and meaning.

[@xxwoman]

Is this Lazy?

[@ThreadBomb]

Sounds like the main problem is that you can't read Japanese.

[@funkygecko]

So you are telling me you would find nothing wrong if those sites were in English? He also shows some English sites that suffer from the same problems but if that didn't convince you then nothing will...

[@longiusaescius2537]

@Funky Gecko it's good