I don't know about you, but I write my 1 in just one stroke of the pen. Also I use a space as a thousands separator, and you need to write 一万 in Japanese for 10 000, not just 万 by itself. That makes for a closer game:

一 / 1 (one stroke vs one)

十 / 10 (two strokes vs two)

一万 / 10 000 (or 10K) (four strokes vs five)

When you get to numbers like 5462, there's no contest versus 五千四百六十二.

I have Japanese publications in which things like chapter numbers are written as 二三 instead of 二十三. But I agree with you.