Cultural Differences

I think we Japanese people are more likely to face cultural differences when we go abroad than people in other countries do because of some unique custom or culture Japan has.


When I went to New Zealand, altough this might be trivial thing, I found a custom strange for me. I was in homestay while I was in NZ. On my first day there, after I went to the bathroom, I closed its door as most Japanese did. After a while, my host mother came to my room and said "Is there someone in the bathroom? I'm waiting for quite a long time because I thought someone was inside." "No.", I answered. Then my host mother a little angrily told me like "When no one is in the bathroom, make sure that you leave the door open. Otherwise people think there is someone inside." I was surprised when I heard that because we Japanese usually close the door after using bathroom maybe so that it doesn't look messy. Since then, I realized that people in most European and American countries did like the case in NZ.

Dou you have any experiences like this ??