> Italics and capital letters have little or nothing to do with how 'Western' web layouts are generally created, and are far from the only way to create emphasi

> Italics and capital letters have little or nothing to do with how 'Western' web layouts are generally created, and are far from the only way to create emphasis or hierarchy in text. They are key to graphic design. Though even in the West, web designers have only been waking up to formal graphic design in the last few years. > Haven't Google, MS, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, everyone demonstrated that this is the goal of what they're doing? The real money now is in commerce, and Japan is well-known for being behind in online commerce due to trust issues with plastic money. I guess that leaves them with old model of ads which would explain the 'million-dollar homepage' look.