Concerning websites, when you compare rakuten Japan and say UK, you see a stark difference in how things are presented. This may just be due to the UK site being done outside Japan/by foreigners, but this would hint at a some preference toward clutter for Japanese customers ?
The classic case of this is Google vs Yahoo in Japan. Yahoo is more popular, and if you look at the layout, you'll see that it's much more cluttered (or at least, that there's loads more information). At one point Google caved in (in Japan) and added more buttons to their top page, but I see they've switched back to the basic logo + search bar.
Another thing to consider is that the cluttered thing is not only Japan: I've heard that other Asian countries also have a preference for clutter. I can't vouch for whether that's true, but it sounds pretty believable.
Yahoo Japan is a pretty Japanese company (dunno about the proportion of Japanese workers there). I only got a very small look at it during interview there, but google Japan seems much more westernized as far as the workforce is concerned.
It would really interesting to know who is responsible for rakuten UK (or any other country). Since prices are in JPY, I am quite confused about the meaning of rakuten UK...
