On: Japan's trains are great. Why is booking one so hard?

Booking online may well be difficult.

But having traveled around Japan extensively, I've had a very easy time buying train tickets in person, at the station. You can buy in advance if you want, but I've rarely had any need; just go, and buy a ticket for the next train.

So I guess I'm not too surprised to see that the website design is crappy: it's an afterthought.

Japanese websites tend to be bad in general.

Obviously there are bad websites in the US or broader West as well, but the average in Japan feels a lot worse imo.