They are infatuated with hardware and appliances. That could be blueray players, toilets, robots, game consoles. Maybe it is a cultural thing, but that's how I see it.

Thinking about it, how much software do you know that has been written in Japan (I can think of Ruby, games don't count as they fall under game console, think PC software), compared say to Western Europe or US. It would seem they are at the same level as any of those countries and there would an equal distribution of software written but that's not the case.