Over the years, I’ve noticed that Japanese devices have a unique style of UI.

What’s that, you ask?

They present a Colossal Cave Adventure Game to the user.

They idea behind Japanese UI, it seems, is to give the user a rich world to explore. “Look what I found!”

Lots of “You are in a twisty maze of passageways, all different” ness.

Lots of options. Not just a lot of options in simple lists, as one would expect an out-of-control engineer to create, but rather modes, tricks and cross-connect dependencies galore, each affecting available options.

Presumably, the device has fulfilled its function when the user fully explores the device’s UI. That done, the user tosses the device and gets something new.