Ping, and online design magazine based in Tokyo, has an interesting article comparing some Japanese websites with their more-or-less equivalent US counterparts.
Personally I like hatenatube , checkpad, and 100shiki.
Japan is a country renowned for it’s technological prowess – being on the cutting edge of robotics, hybrid car research, video game entertainment and countless other areas. Strange then, that whilst the rest of the world has seen a huge boom in “Web 2.0?-style services on the internet over the past 12 months, Japan has been somewhat lagging behind. Fear not, however, as Japan is slowly catching up. Here is a quick look at some of the Web 2.0 goodness coming out of Japan and a look at their Western equivalents.