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Japanese people have grown up in a cartoon culture, and prefer things to be explained using illustrations and screenshots than texts. A manual is considered to be superior if the user is able to follow the procedure intuitively with illustrations and screenshots rather than reading the text line by line.
Users are discouraged from a thick manual crammed with information. Although Japanese people prefer printed manuals, it does not necessarily mean they like reading.
Users who discover mistakes complain to the manufacturer with an air of triumph. Users will pick on errors on button names and even for duplicated punctuation.
Regardless of the user's level, the manual needs to capture their interest so that they continue reading to the end. Some manuals employ methods such as using cartoon characters to introduce specific application examples, or presenting the text in the style of a magazine, in order to make the user want to read through the manual.
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