Why Japanese web design is so different (2013)

Regarding advertising, the article states: "Rather than being seen as a tool to enable people Japanese companies often see the web as just another advertising platform to push their message across as loudly as possible. Websites ends up being about the maximal concentration of information into the smallest space akin to a pamphlet rather than an interactive tool." I find this quite ironic, especially given how unusable most websites are due to third party advertising resources being loaded into them…

> Advertising – Rather than being seen as a tool to enable people Japanese companies often see the web as just another advertising platform to push their message across as loudly as possible. Websites ends up being about the maximal concentration of information into the smallest space akin to a pamphlet rather than an interactive tool. This is rich. I'm not sure who they're comparing Japan to, because definitely not to modern American/mainstream web customs. In fact, my biggest complaint…

I’ve come to prefer Japanese web design over western design in general. It can be messy at times, but you don’t have endless pop ups asking you to sign up for their “newsletter” ad spam that is sold off to third parties(nobody reads those—your stats are fraudulent and people only register because they think it’ll end the pop ups), endless cookie pop ups, random bot support chats for things that would never need it, “Take me to the new design!”…

Well, let's not forget the popularity and success of sites like Craigslist and Drudge Report. Plus don't those images basically look like Amazon or ebay, only somewhat more cluttered and with more-saturated colors?