Culture Shocks

Argent

Argent

Well-known member
So I was watching Non Non Biyori a slice of life anime about a bunch of girls in a small village. It doesn't have fan service or any thing crazy like most shows that claim to be slice of life do.

But it does have a girl transfer to the local small school annex from Tokyo. It does deal with a bit of culture shock from things like how a lack of stores or buses run. It got me thinking about some of the culture shock that people experience.

Honestly some of the biggest ones that have happened to me have been internal travel in Amercia. I remember the first time I traveled to New York. The amount of people and shops open late was completely different from what I was use too. Not to mention that I lived 20ish miles away from a grocery store and it only took about 20 mintues to get there. The same trip in the North East could take an hour.

It was also a shock of how you have to walk with a purpose on the streets of New York. Most of the pedestrians have a place to be and will run you down while in my home town people wandered at a much slower pace. Basically in general ther was just a sense of people rushing that took a while to get use to.


I also saw what I could call weather shock more then culture shock. My college was in a cold climate and on average gets more then 200 inches of snow a year. It had decent foreign exchange program that got students few students from places like the Caribbean. They wore heavy winter coats in October while most students had sweatshirts on. Also thing like planing an extra 10 mintues scrap off snow and not having the car go under half a tank.


I was wondering what experiences other have had during their travels.
 
Argent said:
I also saw what I could call weather shock more then culture shock. My college was in a cold climate and on average gets more then 200 inches of snow a year. It had decent foreign exchange program that got students few students from places like the Caribbean. They wore heavy winter coats in October while most students had sweatshirts on. Also thing like planing an extra 10 mintues scrap off snow and not having the car go under half a tank.
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My parents, before I was born, lived for a time in Manaus. One thing my mother commented was that she felt it was strange that when temperatures reached 25°C/77°F, everyone would go outside wearing coats*, and after living 3 years there, she was doing the same thing.

*As opposed to grabbing their coats when it really is cold - when temperatures go below 20°C/68°F.
 
gral said:
My parents, before I was born, lived for a time in Manaus. One thing my mother commented was that she felt it was strange that when temperatures reached 25°C/77°F, everyone would go outside wearing coats*, and after living 3 years there, she was doing the same thing.

*As opposed to grabbing their coats when it really is cold - when temperatures go below 20°C/68°F.
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It happened my sister. She moved to Southern California over a decade ago and has lost her cold weather tolerance. While not as bad as some she definitely can stand the cold like she used to.

But the same is true for me in too in the opposite direction. The summers I lived in Oklahoma where miserable. Multiple days of 110 degrees lead me to having insane power bills because of massive amounts of air conditioning use.
 
110 degrees is hard on anyone, even people who get this sort of temperatures every year(like I get. The humidity doesn't help things).
 
A major shock when I moved to Washington state (so far north I could walk to Canada in about fifteen minutes) was the sun still being out at 11:00PM at night. Made it hard to keep my day-night cycle straight when the sun would be directly overhead at bedtime. Of course the other half of the year, the sun setting at 4:30 in the afternoon wasn't all that great for keeping a circadian rhythm going either.

The other shocker was the rain. You could go ten weeks without seeing blue in the sky and it would rain continuously the entire time, but the rain was so light it was like a heavy fog and an umbrella would do nothing as it swirled around you.
 
I visited the midwest and what struck me hard was that every one was polite.

Then I realized to my horror that people are right californians are assholes, and try as I might I'm not an exception. Though I do try to limit my dickishness some what.
 
Where I live, it gets hot (upper 90s to lower 100s) and muggy during summer, AND cold during the winter (-20 - -60) (temperatures are in freedom units).
 
Lived in a place with a subtropical climate for 4 years

warm snowless christmas
wearing uniforms in school
going from a uniformly white rural area to an area where half the population was black
no standing fresh water so we had to practice a level of water discipline in the dry months
 
Cherico said:
I visited the midwest and what struck me hard was that every one was polite.

Then I realized to my horror that people are right californians are assholes, and try as I might I'm not an exception. Though I do try to limit my dickishness some what.
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Apperently a lot of foreigners seem to think the US are nice and welcoming people.
Even those in Cali.
From the south, if you are a stuck up asshole from the north or west we are nice, but out of hospitality.

Aa for weather.
It has been awhile since I had actual snow around me and anything below 25 degrees.
Then I came to Korea, then I stayed here till winter.
Now it is snowing pretty good and has been below 10 multiple days in a row
 
Cherico said:
I visited the midwest and what struck me hard was that every one was polite.

Then I realized to my horror that people are right californians are assholes, and try as I might I'm not an exception. Though I do try to limit my dickishness some what.
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Depends on where in California you live.

98% of California is uninhabited.

Of the inhabited areas, the vast majority of Californians live in suburban towns.

The densely populated cesspit city likes Los Angeles and San Francisco drive people crazy. That's where you're going to find assholes.

The rest of the suburban cities are fine. People aren't going to greet you while you walk down the street, but people aren't assholes.

If you live in a rural area like Barstow then people are going to greet you while you walk down the street and are generally nice folk.
 
Val the Moofia Boss said:
The densely populated cesspit city likes Los Angeles and San Francisco drive people crazy. That's where you're going to find assholes.
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I am pretty sure it is just a big city thing. Overall I have tended to find that larger cities I have been too lead to more rudeness. Doesn't matter if it was London, L.A., or New York. The crowds and general addiutude was screw it I have places to be get out of my way.

One thing I also noticed it the pack of people knowing their neighbors. I lived in the Twin Cities for a bit which are couple of mid sized cities with a fairly large metro area. But I lived in a large apartment building and no one knew their neighbors. This is very different then when I grew up in a small neighborhood or where I am now. I might not be best friends with my current neighbors but we all know each other and you get invited to larger BBQ parties.

But I felt a disconnection when I lived in my apartment and it just didn't have that neighborhood feel that I was used to.
 
I am from the Caribbean the very first time I visited Canada I was 6 years old. My memories are a bit fuzzy however I do remember my first time seeing snow at first I had no idea what it was and my naïve younger self stuffed his bare hands in the snow. That was not a fun experience but on the plus side I got to make my first snow angel.
 
Wolf of Arrakis said:
I am from the Caribbean the very first time I visited Canada I was 6 years old. My memories are a bit fuzzy however I do remember my first time seeing snow at first I had no idea what it was and my naïve younger self stuffed his bare hands in the snow. That was not a fun experience but on the plus side I got to make my first snow angel.
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At least you didn't stick your tongue on a metal pole.... Not fun.....
 
Argent said:
What if I double dogged dared you?

You know you can never turn down a double dog dare right?
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I'm more of a cat person.

I'd say moving from Washington to Tennessee my biggest shock was the bugs and fungus. Everything in the Smokies grows about an order of magnitude faster than the desert in California or the snow of Washington. I had to learn to be really, really careful about mowing the lawn because otherwise Kudzu could eat the entire property in a few days. At once point when I didn't mow the lawn for two weeks a freaking tree a couple feet high grew up in it and I had to chop it out before I could mow.

The moisture and warmth of being in an american rainforest (I hadn't realized they existed before then) turbocharged bugs and fungi. I learned to be really careful about cleaning everything because a single dish of leftovers could be full of maggots or grubs shortly after leaving it out, and a sink of unwashed dishes would have mushrooms growing on them by morning.

On the flipside there was wild ginseng (everybody called it wild'sang) growing in the root balls of the old deciduous trees in the mountains, and you could make a decent bit of change if you were willing to climb high in the Smokies past where there were many people and into the dense thickets where hikers didn't go, and gather wild'sang. From what I've heard, those days are over and nobody's found wild'sang in several years but once upon a time it was the last resort of old mountain men and prospectors.

I knew an old mountain man in Washington too, a fisherman who didn't have money, didn't need it and never used it. He hunted and fished and dropped crab pots into the sea from his small boat, and traded his catch for whatever he needed without ever touching currency that he didn't believe in. He was a good friend who taught me how to poach fish and crab to survive when I was young and penniless in Washington. I still remember him explaining that he'd use canned cat food to catch crabs, but you had to only put holes in the can because if you opened it, the crabs would eat the cat food but there if there were only holes punched in the lid, the odor would leak out and more crabs would keep coming but wouldn't eat it so you'd get more crabs that way.

I feel old and miss the days when we had genuine old mountain men who lived on the land and never touched money. They're all gone now. Time is a culture shock too.
 
Bear Ribs said:
The moisture and warmth of being in an american rainforest (I hadn't realized they existed before then) turbocharged bugs and fungi. I learned to be really careful about cleaning everything because a single dish of leftovers could be full of maggots or grubs shortly after leaving it out, and a sink of unwashed dishes would have mushrooms growing on them by morning.
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I have I heard that termites are a big problem in the south too. While it happens in the more Northern climates that I have mainly lived in. While we get bugs and massive amounts of mosquitos the winter kill off really does help control them.
 
Bear Ribs said:
I'm more of a cat person.

I'd say moving from Washington to Tennessee my biggest shock was the bugs and fungus. Everything in the Smokies grows about an order of magnitude faster than the desert in California or the snow of Washington. I had to learn to be really, really careful about mowing the lawn because otherwise Kudzu could eat the entire property in a few days. At once point when I didn't mow the lawn for two weeks a freaking tree a couple feet high grew up in it and I had to chop it out before I could mow.

The moisture and warmth of being in an american rainforest (I hadn't realized they existed before then) turbocharged bugs and fungi. I learned to be really careful about cleaning everything because a single dish of leftovers could be full of maggots or grubs shortly after leaving it out, and a sink of unwashed dishes would have mushrooms growing on them by morning.

On the flipside there was wild ginseng (everybody called it wild'sang) growing in the root balls of the old deciduous trees in the mountains, and you could make a decent bit of change if you were willing to climb high in the Smokies past where there were many people and into the dense thickets where hikers didn't go, and gather wild'sang. From what I've heard, those days are over and nobody's found wild'sang in several years but once upon a time it was the last resort of old mountain men and prospectors.

I knew an old mountain man in Washington too, a fisherman who didn't have money, didn't need it and never used it. He hunted and fished and dropped crab pots into the sea from his small boat, and traded his catch for whatever he needed without ever touching currency that he didn't believe in. He was a good friend who taught me how to poach fish and crab to survive when I was young and penniless in Washington. I still remember him explaining that he'd use canned cat food to catch crabs, but you had to only put holes in the can because if you opened it, the crabs would eat the cat food but there if there were only holes punched in the lid, the odor would leak out and more crabs would keep coming but wouldn't eat it so you'd get more crabs that way.

I feel old and miss the days when we had genuine old mountain men who lived on the land and never touched money. They're all gone now. Time is a culture shock too.
Click to expand...
You would be surprised in the Appalachia
 
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