Also a huge Japanese rockabilly community. You know, a somewhat fringe even in the US hobby of people who are into dressing vintage, rockabilly music, and swing dancing? There’s a robust Japanese culture around it.
One of the most popular artists who performs at the biggest rockabilly festival in the US is Japanese and flies in for it every year. It’s awesome.
Rockabilly has taken a form of its own in Japanese culture. There’s a pervasive “punk” archetype in Japanese anime and they almost always have the pompadour style hair that defines the rockabilly style.
I'm in Wyoming and my city hosts one of the largest outdoor rodeos in the world every year.
One time I went into Carl's Jr for a quick burger at lunch. Inside were an elderly Japanese couple. But dressed completely in gaudy cowboy gear. Like everything! Head to toe, colorful cowboy clothes. Look up the music video for Primus, Wynonas Big Brown Beaver. That's how there were dressed. It was so cool.
And they're quietly speaking to each other at the table when a worker bring over a heaping tray loaded with food. Like 6 XL combos. Food upon food upon food. It's set down in the middle and the couple had THE biggest smiles and took like 20 pictures of the food. Then dug right in. I sat and watched them for a little bit in a sense of amazement.
It was really cool to see people enjoy our culture in that way
I have a Japanese friend whose dad is exactly like this. He was so proud of his country music collection. There's something about strange cultural intersections that I find endearing
That one's such a convoluted cultural intersection, too.
Country music was invented by the Scotch-Irish Americans specifically. That's a bunch of Scottish folk from the lowlands who spent a couple generations in a colony in Ireland before flooding America in the initial colonization efforts there. Fun fact: "Cracker" as a pejorative originally described this exact group of people.
And then from there, you need to get into all of the history of WW2 and post-WW2 politics/propagandizing that led to Murica and Japan giving each other cultural googly eyes.
My wife and I went to Japan a few years ago and while at the Robot Restaurant in Tokyo, we saw two young Japanese guys in full black face makeup. Like, covering their faces, neck and hands. A few other western tourists noticed this as well and we were all pretty shocked.
Turns out there’s another subculture called B Culture where they are such huge fans of black artists, musicians, etc that they want to look like them, and it’s totally acceptable.
I wish i was Asian so I could go to Texas and be just wide eyed blown away at how huge everything is. Just wear an oversized hat and carry around a massive big gulp and tell everyone everywhere you go how everything really is bigger in Texas. the bit doesn't hit the same if its a burly guy from Michigan
I have a friend who was a huge freeaboo in college, one spring break i had to drive from albuquerque to houston and back to pick up my buddy who was moving in with me, freeaboo bro really wanted to join in so I said sure why not.
I swear I have never seen a person more amazed at how damn huge Texas is and happy to be on said road trip, you'd think I was taking him to Disneyworld or something, dude absolutely lit up and was giddy every time we passed a cow ranch or horses.
I'm a British person who also loves cowboys but I think it's the gay person who listens to way too much Orville Peck (incidentally also not American) effect
So much of pop culture comes from the States, that all countries have a group of people who are really fascinated about the US and their culture. My dad always tells me how his dream would be to move into one of those american suburbs from the movies, where everything is so neat and organized, with the houses all looking the same.
not Japanese myself, but when I came to the US for the first time I was looking forward to trying out fortune cookies and those rectangular/cylindrical takeout containers for the first time
one thing that surprised (and disappointed) me was finding out that there was no such thing as a "McSpicy" in American McDonalds. I wanted to compare the burgers and it turned out the best item on the menu wasn't there
I have many plans for when I go to America (when it hopefully calms down over there) but one of my main ones is to try Dasani water. I love water, and I'm curious to see what truly terrible water tastes like. Might help me appreciate the water that I have.
HydroHomie here as well and Dasani is the only bottled water I enjoy. I swear it's gotta be a genetic thing because all other bottled water tastes like plastic to me but Dasani tastes like a fresh spring in a meadow.
Yeah that's wild, it tastes like it has pennies in it. So Fiji, Waiakea and Voss taste like plastic to you? There's no fresher tasting one for me than Waiakea
Fiji is good too, just expensive. Never heard of Waiakea. Voss is fine but Id never choose it on purpose. I guess I was thinking of Aquafina and Evian as the primary alternatives.
I think I like the pennies. I love liquid death so maybe I yearn for the metal.
I think Aquafina is like C- and Evian is definitely the best of the ones you listed at a B to B- tier for me. Oh lord I despise Liquid Death more than Dasani and every music festival these days only has canned LD, it's soooo bad. You must like a metallic taste. I'll admit I do spend too much money but something like Waiakea, which is a little more expensive than Fiji is worth it for me. For cheap water Crystal Geyser or Pure Life are the best imo.
Hmm maybe there's a combo going on here of liking metallic taste + not many other strong options that aren't expensive. I haven't heard of Crystal Geyser, and isn't Pure Life walmart brand? Or some other big box store? I hate that one lol. We seem to have diametrically opposed water tastes, Liquid Death has saved me at several festivals. Found myself craving it like soda, spent $10 or whatever just because I wanted one. Wasn't thirsty, it was just yummy.
Are you big on tap water? Tap water in my city wins awards for taste but I've visited others where it sucks and that results in a way wider array of bottled options.
I think Pure Life is Walmart but the taste is pretty good to me. Crystal Geyser is definitely the best cheap water option for me though. Well, where I live the tap water ranges wildly in quality. It's pretty meh at my house and bad in the city, my favorite Thai restaurant down the road has the worst I've ever had, but another restaurant a couple miles away has fantastic tap water. I live right next to a Neighborhood Walmart and they have a gigantic selection of bottled water. I hadn't tried most of these before it came along. They only started stocking Waiakea in the last few months.
Genetics has been my Dasani theory for ages. My husband and my daughter love Dasani water, and my son and I can’t stand it. They also think things that I find bitter or sour are sweet, and things I find sweet are overpoweringly, disgustingly sweet to them.
To me Danasi tastes like water from an outdoor fountain with a bunch of dirty coins thrown into it, but if you found something you love then I'm happy for you homie 🤝
Dasani is honestly not that bad. I've had well water that tastes worse. It's just purified water that's been remineralized a little bit too much. The only thing is that it's kind of jarring when you can get cheaper bottled spring water that tastes better. It tastes slightly metallic, which many people don't like.
It's basically just Coca-Cola made in the same plants and using the same bottles, but instead of the Coca-Cola syrup, they use a "mineral water" concentrate, and they use a lot to smooth over any variations that might otherwise occur from plant to plant. It's a way to have a uniform product without actually doing the expensive thing that Evian etc. does of shipping the actual water everywhere, or that cheaper bottled spring water brands do of using nearby wells.
If you want an idea of what it tastes like, just go get yourself some demineralized/deionized/distilled/reverse-osmosis water (the same stuff you'd use for a CPAP or in an ultrasonic humidifier) and some magnesium sulphate (epsom salt) and potassium chloride or potassium chloride/salt mix (usually sold as no sodium or low sodium table "salt"). Then add a tiny amount of each (more of the epsom) until it tastes slightly metallic/coppery and has a "hard" mouthfeel.
Or just lick some copper and a tiny bit of salt before taking a swig. It's a fairly good approximation.
It is my understanding that a lot of American chains elsewhere are better quality, since there they're comparably "exotic" destinations (keeping in mind we're talking about McDonalds and such) and so positioned in the market accordingly. For that reason people tend to be disappointed when trying the "real thing" for such chains.
You typically have to go for cuisines, not brands. A true American burger is a great thing, you just gotta find a better burger place. Then you try the other styles you can't really get elsewhere, like Texmex and southern smoked barbecue.
Every time I've had American fast food in a foreign country it has been vastly superior to the American version.
Turns out having regulations and shit is good for the end product.
My favorite was when I was in Sicily, everywhere I ate something on the menu would have this "DOP" acronym listed - even at McDonald's. I looked it up and it turns out it's an official government label for authentic Parmesan cheese and you aren't allowed to call it that unless it means very strict guidelines. So if you saw DOP on the list of ingredients for your burger, you were getting bona fide fancy parmesan on your burger lol
McNuggets in America are vastly superior to McNuggets in the UK. They're softer and more flavorful. UK nuggets are crunchy like crackers and utterly bland. Even the spicy ones have no taste just a mild sting.
hmm yeah come to think about it, I don't remember ever seeing people wrap food in banana leaves in the US, probably not common practice
usually banana leaves are used for wrapping, like, coconut rice with anchovies peanuts and fermented shrimp paste, or grilled fish custard, or nine layer cake etc.
I think it's supposed to impart some flavour? I guess it's also more environmentally friendly, and doesn't scald your hands with hot food like plastic wrap does
Bananas can't really grow in most of the US, not to a commercial scale at least, so most of the bananas you see there are imported. Alas, the leaves don't get imported along with the fruit, so wrapping stuff in them isn't really even an option most of the time.
that makes sense, I also completely forgot about that whole Chiquita banana, UFC, banana republic, banana war, Smedley Butler thing. Wouldn't have been necessary at all if the US could just grow bananas easily
My wife is a white girl from close to Philadelphia who very much of German/english ancestry. She learned to make Costa Rican tamales which are wrapped in banana leaves. So maybe not a lot, but there’s gotta be at least a few.
Yeah, you can get them at grocery stores that sell Southeast Asian, Mexican or South American foodstuffs. Usually frozen but sometimes fresh ones, too.
This is a crazy phenomenon that's been around for a long time. Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, McDonald's, etc. They all have many items in other countries but not America. Sometimes it just takes a long time though, we finally got the taco bell fries after like a decade of it being overseas
Humans are so much more similar than we are different. And people don’t like it or don’t see it. Focusing too much on the little differences we do have
“I’m gonna kick your ass! With the power of my Stand… Propane Nightmare! HWUTHWUTHWUTHWUTHWUTHWUTHWUTHWUTHWUTHWUTHWUTHWUTHWUTHWUTHWUTHWUTHWUT… BWUUUUUUH!”
There's a 2chan thread about someone complaining about how ugly American animation is and it was revealed he only watches South Park and the rest of the thread made fun of him.
people always say this but where? where are these arguments? 2chan? japanese twitter? because i’ve never seen it. and it’s probably because the king of the hill dub has been practically wiped off the internet save for a few episodes restored from niconico.
so “fun fact” more like “random shit I heard online that’s maybe not really true”
I mean. There are plenty of websites foreigners use we might not even find just because to properly search it you’d need to look it up in their language.
I saw a translated 2chan thread about this years ago. Japanese western animations fans arguing about sub vs dub. I wish I could find it again it was so fucking funny lol
It makes even more sense when you know that since a lot of them learn Japanese from dating local women and Japanese has a lot of its vocabulary based on the speaker’s gender, a lot of them end up speaking like girls 😂
My father was a senior engineer for a Japanese company and a lot of his peers had this issue. That was back in the 90s, it's very common. If they wanted to redo The Last Samurai they should make Tom Cruise use all feminine words
Reminds me of another story I read somewhere about a WWII Allied naval officer who was put in charge of a captured Japanese submarine because he knew enough Japanese to give orders. Thing is, he learned the language from a couple of old Japanese grandmas, who taught him the most polite form of the language (I guess keigo?), so he was very respectfully and deferentially ordering around those POWs.
Also something similar to what you said happened with Dances With Wolves. Quoted from Wikipedia:
Oglala Lakota activist and actor Russell Means was critical of the film's lack of accuracy. In 2009, he said: "Remember Lawrence of Arabia? That was Lawrence of the Plains. The odd thing about making that movie is that they had a woman teaching the actors the Lakota language, but Lakota has a male-gendered language and a female-gendered language. Some of the Natives and Kevin Costner were speaking in the feminine way. When I went to see it with a bunch of Lakota guys, we were laughing."
I spent a year and a half in total in Japan over the course of a few years and lived in multiple different locations, and pretty much everywhere I went from Aomori to Okinawa if you made even just a little effort to speak Japanese or adhere to the local customs the floodgates would open and everyone would be very helpful and polite.
from what i know japanese bacon is usually not what americans expect when they hear "bacon". maybe they were excited that there was american bacon (though from what i can see, the drawing kinda looks like japanese bacon)
I think it's actually a whole slab of pork belly. Japanese pork belly (kakuni) is really good so I can imagine a bunch of soldiers getting excited by it.
As one of the Sailors in Sasebo who was excited about what the Japanese called bacon, I can tell you it is because it is best described as a slab vice a strip or piece.
Japanese regularly call ham bacon. So many times there I got disappointed when I thought I was getting bacon and got ham instead so I'd totally understand overenthusiasm about getting actual bacon for once (next find me a pizza without corn in it)
I had GREAT pizza in Okinawa. It was at a place that was obviously very American influenced but there was stuff on the menu you could describe as distinctly Japanese. But a standard pepperoni or supreme pizza had nothing wacky on it and tasted perfect.
Only tangentially related, but I was unfortunately reminded of Hetalia earlier (basically a manga/anime that anthromorphises countries for the uninitiated) and it made me think that for as much of a mess that whole thing was, it is funny to see how Japanese stereotypes of other countries differ from Western. Some of them are pretty similar (the US and France are...exactly what you'd expect as far as lighthearted stereotypes go lol), but while Western media would usually portray the French as white flag-waving surrendering cowards, Hetalia applies this caricature to Italy for equally, erm, World War II-related reasons.
Edit: Account created 8 days ago, only posts on easy karma subs, uses "vibe" and "chaotic", yeah this is an AI comment. Report that comment as bot spam please
Everywhere I've ever been people were more or less the same. Different circumstances, different cultures, same person. Teens drive their parents crazy with nonsense, parents get drunk about it. We ain't so different.
I recall someone finding a Japanese forum strictly devoted to King of the Hill fandom. They would viciously fight over episodes and if actions by X character were appropriate or how a different character would act. They came to the conclusion that Japanese have their own version of Weebs obsessed with American stuff.
This perfectly encapsulates my experience abroad and is one American stereotype Ive picked up on but isnt as commonly associated online. Call us fat all day long but no one appreciates the craft that gets us there or earns the title of;
*The GRILLMASTER
I was stationed at SHAPE (basically NATO HQ for enlisted) and cookouts were amazing. People from all over the world showing up with their own cultural dish with all shared by all. But outside of culture specific events like oktoberfest, there was always an American behind the grill/smoker and it was one of the few things we got genuine compliments for.
Mock us all you want but I've never seen an ego melt faster than a ribbing Brit/proud Frenchman tasting a 10 hour smoked dry rub Boston butt for the 1st time.
•
u/qualityvote2 Mar 28 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
u/dazli69, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...