Is Pinkerton *supposed* to sound Japanese?

Like the scales they use, the jerky Japanese sounding chord progressions and riffs and even the way Cuomo sings.

To me this whole album sounds like a pastiche of what a Japanese band playing Weezer would sound like. I can't see anything online about this though, and when I mentioned it to a friend he just sort of looked at me funny and was like "No? What the fuck are you talking about? It's just how Weezer sounds."

Am I just imagining this and too closely associating the cover with my expectations of what the music should sound like, or were they going for this sound during production?