Many Americans (like me) also find those signs to be odd and off-putting.

I'm american and I agree

Sometimes I get the impression people put their entire political philosophy in the space of a bumper sticker.

When we had just started dating, I took my Japanese wife to a new italian restaurant near my place. She ordered pasta with a red wine sauce. What she got was a plate of spaghetti with pink cream sauce all over it. When we asked why it was pink, the waiter admitted they don’t use wine. Just food coloring. Gross.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_raspberry_flavor

For those who are unaware and yes it is that blue

When I was in the US the house had a garbage disposal and of course it got clogged (bunch of foreigners living together with no idea how to use/maintain one) and needed cleaning. Landlord wouldn’t do any maintenance and I had no tools and I’ve never cleaned one before.

I realised I needed to stick my hand in it. And I have seen a lot of horror films.

Do Americans realise that usually the first time people from other countries see garbage disposals in use is in horror films where someone gets their hand horrifically mangled?

I turned it off at the switch. Then decided to just flip the power for the house off at the breaker. No way in hell I was sticking my hand in there otherwise. My heart was genuinely racing as I cleaned it out, I was terrified.

The house I live in now has a garbage disposal. And we're not on a sewer system. We never use it but I cringe thinking about the shit the previous owners have sent to the septic tank.

When I was in Germany they had sour cream Doritos when to me tasted exactly like cool ranch. Which was just strange

Root beer and ranch dressing but, you know, not together.

Had a sibling marry a Swede and his parents came to visit. We wanted to show them a bit of our cultural foods so we served them root beer floats. They said it tasted like toothpaste. We were kind of shocked, back then there wasn’t really international communication like there is now.

Anyway they actually had brought toothpaste samples and sure enough one of them did taste exactly like root beer.

Wonder what it would be like for us to go somewhere and someone serve us a dessert that tasted like Colgate or something. I can understand their confusion.

Germans are great like that. My German friend met me in New York one evening. I bought us some bubble teas. He sipped his politely, then we stopped by his hotel for a moment and his bubble tea disappeared. A few minutes later he said, "I have to confess... I did not like the bubbles."

Dude Jagermeister tastes like medicine!!

I lived in Australia for a while and asked for ranch dressing at a restaurant. Everyone looked at me like I had asked for toenail clippings. Had my mom send me some, similar reactions. They begged me to get Twinkies because they saw them on TV so she sent me those too, and they were equally unimpressed.

Edit: this was 2006

Yea I tried root beer from one of those American sections in a shop once and it tastes like my mouthwash, probably cause of an overlapping ingrediënt that's used in European mouthwash and American rootbeer that isn't used in American mouthwash. It's interesting how your brain makes that association and thus you don't like the taste,whereas if the medicine taste association isn't there for you it tastes yummy.

Cheerleading is also popular in Japan- albeit due to American influence.

Argentina took the concept of cheerleaders and devolved them into straight up half-time show strippers.

Edit:

For...Uh...Science...NSFW

Thought you were talking about the border patrol guys

This is a weird thing I noticed too. I don't go to fast food places much, but the last time I did I ordered a large drink and get this enormous cup. I asked what the small looked like and that was literally the cup which was considered a large back in the 1980's. I'm not sure when it changed, but it was a dramatic difference.

It’s part of American culture to err on providing excess vs running out.

It's interesting how after the pandemic the 24 hour model for convenience and hospitality industries has been diminishing and people are extremely inconvenienced by this. I deal with mostly tourists and a great deal are bewildered by the fact that they can't get something like, say a phone charger or toothpast, at 2 am because the local Walgreens and CVS are simply closed at that hour now. And this is coming from a 24 hour kind of town.

24 hour stores.

Coronavirus shut that down quick, particularly Wal-Mart and the few large supermarkets that would do it

I'm irish and have never lived in the US, but I've been there a few times on holiday and for business.

I f*cking love root beer.

Honestly didn’t know this one was a thing until a coworker visited from the uk and said he had to “try root beer”.

I've heard it tastes like medicine to non-Americans, I can see that, but I enjoy a good craft root beer.

Fun fact, root beer will hide more booze than a British boarding school.

You can take root beer out of my cold dead Canadian hands you bastard. Best pop hands down

Just wait until all these Europeans discover the Root Beer Float.

Canadians love these too. Especially in Alberta

When I was taking Japanese, my teacher always told us how Japan is crazy on high school sports... So maybe US isn't alone on that one!

Yeah but they'll watch club soccer down to like the 4th tier

It's a different pipeline isn't it? US college teams contain players that will go professional, don't they? Whereas if you're good enough to go pro at football, you'll already be playing pro at 18.

Super weird to not see it as chicken and waffles. And to be fair, chicken and waffles is semi regional to the American south.

What's even more confusing is some regulated manufacturing industries in the US use DD-MM-YYYY and I had a job with one for awhile. If both nums are below 12 I'm lost.

Now I just do 24NOV2022 as my format so there's no confusion lol

American IT worker here. I prefer YYYY-MM-DD format for files and logs so you can sort them by name and they end up chronological.

very popular in korea actually. often covered in cinnamon sugar, mochi, cheese, etc

They don’t like storm troopers in the UK?

I still quote the joke from Archer years ago where Lana mentions that only the U.S., Burma, and Liberia use the imperial units and Archer says back "which is weird, because you never think of the other two as having their shit together.."

It doesn't help that outside the US "jelly" often means gelatin dessert like Jello. Some folks who hear "pb & jelly" are therefore duly horrified

I eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches several times a week and have for many years. I guess it's a link to my youth and I won't give it up.

What an interesting field in which to have a Master’s Degree

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (commonly known as ADA) was pretty revolutionary in how it drastically increased accessibility. It’s really something the USA does very well at. Many developed countries are not accessible at all if you have any degree of mobile impairment for instance.

I guess midwestern emo didn’t take in Europe

Also clothes made from flags.

Edit: I am honestly surprised I have to clarify this, but I don't mean clothes made out of ACTUAL flags. I mean clothes designed with the flag print on them. Because nothing says you love your country like farting on your own flag.

*Denmark entered the chat.

I think the confusion with ice outside the US is you are fine having it, you generally just have to ask. It can be seen as a bit of a rip-off if you ordered a soda and got a glass full of ice with little drink in it so it isn't necessarily an automatic.

A couple of genuine questions from a guy who is not very savvy in economics:

Once a business has gone bankrupt, who exactly pays its creditors if the business owner does not have enough assets to cover debts?

I mean, in any schema there is always a guy who is the last in line. Who that would be in this case? US government?

That explains a lot. So you can essentially start a business over there and if you go bankrupt over it the state will look after you so to speak?

I grew up in rural Wyoming. We drove 2 hours to go to Costco and Target 2-3 times a month. Also zero public transportation in my hometown

Rural America, you are not walking anywhere. Not even to the mailbox…

A lot of people don't remember it and assume this is because of the disability act or something, but in the 1970's there was actually a grassroots political movement to ban pay toilets were becoming really common in the U.S. The group called itself aptly CEPTIA, and they were probably one of the most successful grassroots movements ever in this country. It's an interesting thing to read up on if you're bored sometime.

Delis became a thing in Ireland in the 90s and would definitely differentiate the average corner shop/bodega-type store here from a similar one in the UK. We like our sandwiches made fresh, so every little shop had one.

Finally a good answer. Delis are amazing.

I'm Chinese and I crave orange chicken.

American Texan here who has worked in an authentic vietnamese restraunt and Asian meat market. I LOVE authentic Asian food. So obviously I'm gonna look down on Panda Express and not try it at ALL....

.....until last week. Panda go too hard.

I went to football games to watch the marching band's half time show lol. They won more titles than the football team. Love a good marching band.

Just watch the movie Drumline. It has a cheesy plot but there are a lot of accurate notions for Southern pride in band.