Thanks dutch baka
,
How long do you have to wait to see the content, and what type of connection are you using?
The html page isn't really the problem when it comes to long loading times, it's often the images and scripts that keep you waiting. An 80kB page should, also on slow connections, completely load within 4-5 seconds.
Unfortunately Internet Explorer waits for all images to be loaded before displaying a table, Firefox and Netscape will display the html first and load the images later.
The news feed from NewsOnJapan.com is slowing our opening page down a lot as well because it has to access a different server, but I think it's worth it. The same goes for the JBanner, but since that is in a separate table it won't slow down the main content. Other than that, the pages have been stripped of all excess JavaScript.
Often the best way to speed up your pages is splitting the layout into different tables. Unfortunately I can't split our design up any further.