I actually rather doubt that this was a strictly "Japanese" thing, as you say, since there was likely lots of input from Apple HQ somewhere along the line. It is certainly not a typical style of advertisement over here, though voices are edited quite a bit, and for him to have been normal sounding in a big white room might have been creepy (or creepier). Although, I do rather prefer this garbage to American car commercials -- you get used to them after a while, but think about how creepy that is!
Speaking of creepy, this guy in the video looks like an unassuming guy, but he keeps tripping over his pronunciation.... It's pretty bad, when that's basically going on the whole video. He speaks too fast sometimes, so it's clear that he's never been trained in announcing-type jobs, and though he's not harpy or otherwise crass, it's still pretty bad. Then, on top of it, he's echoing, which magnifies all this.
In a word, he's extremely awkward.
