Brad forwarded me this link to Creating Passionate Users, a neat blog from the people who created the Head First series of computer books; I’d picked up one of them before. The blog itself covers a lot of issues relating to design and user experience: topics I am very interested in these days.

Specifically, Brad forwarded this post on The Difference Between Japan and US, which showed an ugly U.S. manhole cover versus a cool Japanese example:

Beauty and attention to design detail… everywhere I turned during my two week stay (Tokyo and Kyoto), I saw it. Every–and I mean every Japanese restaurant (including the fast-food sushi joints) had an architectural bent. A sense of style. An aesthetic sensibility you just don’t see throughout the US!

Check it out.