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First of all I think it's strange (depending on the artist you're into) that you find a lot of the music made in the 90s in the west "crap" if you enjoy jpop now. A LOT of it is still much more the same as 90's music than it sounds like the pop music in the US today.
Dance/house/trancey music still is a heavy influence, american "dance"-music seems a lot more RnB-ish than the japanese (allthough there are sings of this changing a bit right now, like the release of the madonna album).
I think some of the problem with the "pop" in the end of the 90's was that it became ridiculous and comical, childish in a way, like backstreet boys , spice girls and aqua. These relied heavily on image and it was obious that they were "characters" (especially spice girls which even had names for their characters ) rather than "real people".
I don't really think the music was "better" or "worse" back then, but to me what happened was that I got bored with a lot of the music that was released. The music I liked wasen't really a part of the mainstream music anymore, Hip-Hop often turns out extremely repetetive to me (f.ex by repeating the almost exact same sample through the entire(!) the song), the pop music turned away from dance and "rave"-music influences as it was no longer in fashion. When I discovered Japanese music of course I could go back in time to discover a lot of songs from end of the 90s that I would enjoy, but what I also found interesting and attractive was that this type of music still topped the charts, and it was still given a "serious" treatment by good musicians. There were also other reasons, like the heavy influence of classical music in some pieces and of course the high pitched vocals, the way the never a songs almost always is a "three piece song" (don't ask haha) which gives it more variety, and also how some songs "dare" to be silly and theatrical just for the sake of entertainment (much like aqua did, compare f.ex H!P to aqua videos.. )
I guess in the end the entire scene of the japanese music is more appealing to me, even though the music really isen't all that different (allthough the most popular music topping the charts is different). However the things that makes it different is what I was missing from the music surrounding me around 2003....
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