I've found that interesting too.  And I definitely agree with the website design, though I've seen faaaar worse than those, even in relatively popular websites.  They seem to like putting everything in boxes, and loading the page with 100+ boxes of some sort.  It has its uses, but definitely overload inducing.<p>That said, a huge amount of the buildings in Japan are somehow different from others (different shape, color splashes, wall art), and there's a lot of random green spaces (usually with a shrine of some sort) in even the densest / most businessey areas.  There are, of course, the standard looks like your map example, and cheap apartment housing that's the same everywhere in the world, but I've yet to see that amount of diversity <i>anywhere</i> else as the <i>rule</i>, rather than the exception.