Is it just me, or do Japanese websites seem much more spartan than their American, Korean, and Chinese counterparts? Just look at the Japanese Wikipedia, or compare Asahi Shimbun's website to the Chosun Ilbo's. And websites for anime for the most part are very minimalistic too. A few background pictures, a bit of static decoration, and that's it. Where are the obnoxious flash-games, the flashy advertisements, the animated buttons I've come to associate with commercial internet?

Is it because so many Japanese web-users browse on cell-phones? Or it just to save bandwidth out of an ethical philosophy of frugality?

Just seems a little weird to me that one of the leading nations on the internet has such plain websites.

Especially for Wikipedia, I mean an article on something as visual as the OS-tans, and they don't have a single picture. Not a single picture for the article on Azumanga Daioh, Haruhi, or Evangelion. I mean, these were big-hit animes, but not a single picture? I mean, the Hungarian, Thai, and Indonesian versions of the EVA page have more pictures than the country of origin!