Anti-aliasing is meant to smooth over edges, and simulate a higher resolution. If you haven't noticed, some of those kanji over there are kind hard to read. I found that after getting used to the appearance of blur, the text was actually more readable, and more pleasant to the eyes. ClearType is designed to make things follow the "hinting" of the letter even more clearly, so that the letter looks as close as it can get to the original design specifications. When you scrunch a letter up really small, sometimes parts of the letter become obscure due to the lack of pixels in which to define the letter, ClearType was designed to help get around this issue by allowing partial pixels to be manipulated to make the letters slightly more clear on extremely low resolution screens, like PDAs and such. However, it also looks better on any LCD monitor, generally, because it follows the design specifications for the font better. It's effect is lessened at higher resolution, but I find that because of the softer "blur" effect that it gives the letters, large portions of text are actually easier to read. Contrast is definitely part of it, but too much contrast and things are harder on the eyes. LCD screens are higher contrast than CRT displays anyway.