I was searching on a CSS gallery and ended up running into a great looking japanese site. The name of it, which happens to be in Japanese, is clearly not something that I can type easily, but the url is http://kousotsu-kyujin.com/. This got me wondering about other Japanese sites, and so I set off to find some of the coolest Japanese website designs I could. I didn’t want to spend too much time looking, and I found a small collection of 3 great-looking Japanese website designs, all of which I have no clue what they say or what they are about. Check them out below!

Starting off with the first website I found, you can find the link here. What I really like about this design is how all of the colors seem to blend together so nicely. The design makes use of many web 2.0 style gradients, like in the background, logo, and badge off to the right side of the header image. The blue and orange color scheme really works wonders, and the site stands out quite a bit in my eyes.

Another thing I really like about this design is how creative it is. There are many small illustrations around the site of characters, places, people, and namely some strange chicken thing. I’m not sure how important it is to the theme of the site, but it is used throughout all of the pages and helps keep the theme focused and centralized. This is one website design I absolutely love.

Some Electric Company

The next site I ran into was an electric company. I found it at ohm.jp, which is a fairly short URL and very simple to remember. The only reason I can assume it’s an electric company, aside from all of the products it seems to be showcasing, would be the logo that for some strange reason has “OHM ELECTRIC” written in English. Not sure I can explain why that is, but it’s a nice logo nonetheless!

What I like about this site is just how sleek it looks. All of the top navigation links have a shiny look to them, like a great web 2.0 gloss. They also have a really nice hover effect that changes the color whenever moused over. They also have many gradients thrown around throughout the site as well, though not as populated as the previous site I listed. The icons in the sidebar also look fantastic, like this for example.

Simplicity is Key

In the last site I have for you today, I would say it is a very simple site. Clean, sort of empty-looking in a way, but definitely a good thing for the site. You can find it at http://www.sms-corp.net/. I feel like the design of this site is so simplistic and easy to use, it is a perfect starting point for any small business site. Having a main header section where your logo and memorable graphics will be, and then content soon follows down the center, along with an easy-to-navigate footer.

Though the site may not have as many flashy graphics or appealing Flash animations as the previous sites, this is one site that I truly appreciate for it’s sheer simplicity. The coloring scheme in the navigation up top adds a little bit of color and flair to the page, but still leaves it that white, professional look. I think that this is such a great design not for how beautiful the graphics are, but for how great the site looks as is, without bunches of everything cluttering up the page.

So that’s my small laundry list of Japanese website designs I really like. If you have any more you’ve found feel free to post them up in the comments, as I’d be glad to check them out and add a few more bookmarks to my inspiration folder.