41. When people here are sick, they wear masks (those SARS masks if you remember those).
42. At least in middle school, every kid has to join some school club, whether it be the soccer club or the art club.
43. While America uses 3 holes on the side of its paper for binding, Japan uses 2 holes. I believe this is the main reason Japan and America sometimes have a hard time being friends.
44. In English, people congratulate each other on the new year itself "Happy new years!" but in Japanese, people congratulate each other on the rising of the sun the day of the new year (more specifically, darkness giving way to light, and indicating that a new year is upon us, but yeah).
45. Japan speaks Japanese and America speaks mostly English (you don't say!)
46. At least in my city, there are bells at certain times of the day (6 am, noon and 6 pm are the only ones I can remember at this time) to remind you what general time it is.
47. Despite Japanese people being "quiet" and "polite," the way you get the server's attention in a restaurant is to yell "Excuse me (sumimasen)!" If they aren't around, you yell louder so they can hear you in the back. In the states we usually just raise our hand or make eye contact. There is also a button in many restaurants that you can hit to make a server come over. Very convenient.
48. Not that there isn't a glass ceiling still in the states, but it's VERY apparent here and women don't have near the respect that men have.
49. Japanese houses/apartments have a small place just to take off your shoes at the very entrance of the house called a genkan. Every Japanese take their shoes off before entering someone's house. Not everyone does this in the states.
50. The Japanese say something like "excuse me" as they enter someone's house.
51. Books are read from right to left and open from left to right in general.
52. People brush 3 times a day in Japan instead of 2 (or in my case, 1 often times).
53. Japanese can't tell the difference between a green light and the first 2-3 seconds of a red light.
53. Speaking of lights, Japan calls green lights "blue" even though they are green in color.
54. Instead of DMV and emission checks, Japan has bi-yearly car inspections to determine if a car is still road worthy. It can cost around $1,000.
55. ATMs can close. WTF? Very convenient in this CASH based society let me tell you.
56. When you receive change after paying for things, they hand you the dollar bills first and then the coins.
57. A lot of Japanese sit down when they take showers on little stools.
58. Nobody says "goodbye" on the phones here. They just say something like "ok then!" or something to that effect.
59. People point to their nose when they point to themselves here.
60. Instead of just a wave when someone lets you in a car lane here, people honk or hit their safety lights for a few seconds.
It's taking a while to knock these ones out so probably going to go down to 10 at a time from now on.
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