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I've encountered a few of these games over the years — e.g., Nobunaga and Catch Out from Grimpeur — with games from Japanese designers having a higher confusion average than games from non-Japanese designers. Part of the issue, I think, is that sometimes these games take a half-dozen plays before you have any clue what you're doing, so at first the game is a whirlwind of activity with you having no direction, no sense of what you're doing that relates to success or failure. The rules just don't map cleanly onto what you might expect from previous games that you've played, so you lack reference points.
Another part is that bluffing seems to play a core role in a larger percentage of games from Japanese designers, and I'm generally terrible at bluffing games. I can't get into the world created by the bluffs, so I don't know how to react when confronted by them. Again, this issue is something that you can solve only after a half-dozen or more plays of a game. You need to live it long enough that you and the game meet halfway and come to an understanding of how you can live together in harmony. (Insert obligatory link to my "Hidden Depth" column.)
In any case, ideally I've understood enough of See-Know-Buzz to give you a sense of what's going on underneath the (ninja) hood of this game engine.
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