See this fun (and maybe not totally correct?) article about Common Customs Abroad That They Want The US To Adopt.
Please pick ONE (but if you want to pick a couple, that’s no big deal) and please NOT UHC, we have done that too much here on the SDMB,
I chose-
4. “In Japan, there is a service that you can call 24 hours a day that comes to you with two drivers and a car when you’ve been drinking. One driver will drive you and your car home, while the other follows in their car to pick up the driver at the end of the route. It minimizes DUIs and is actually really affordable.”
Edit: I see the OP meant to link to an article. When it is linked, I will add or edit my comment.
Does “custom” have to mean a business practice, or social custom?
If social, then I really think Americans should do away with the stigma of adults living with their parents. It really makes great financial sense to do so, combining incomes under a single roof, at a time of runaway inflation and housing costs. Nothing to mock there, unless the adult is a purposeful loser. In many other nations, this is normal.
I don’t know… it seems like a thinly veiled way for the article author to shit on the US and Americans for a bunch of social welfare things that aren’t really “customs”, like single payer healthcare, or that just developed differently, like better passenger rail systems.
But if I had to pick, I’d say that the Italian passeggiata was something that was surprisingly cool. In the early-mid evening (7-9 or so), people just went out and walked around the city. They weren’t necessarily going anywhere with any sort of purpose, just walking around. Some might do a bit of light shopping, or buy gelato or whatever, but ultimately it was just a situation where everyone sort of had an evening stroll. First night in Rome, we got done with our tourist stuff for the day, rested for a little bit, and my wife says “Ok, get up. Time for the passegiata.” and then explained it. So we went wandering around central Rome for an hour or so, then found a restaurant, had dinner, and walked around some more.
It would be nice in places & seasons that are walkable- doesn’t have to be downtown or even a built up area. Just if everyone just wandered their neighborhood would be nice.
Which is unfortunate, because I’d much rather hear about actual customs not matters of public policy or differences in the way that things organically developed (see 110v vs. 220v in US and Europe for an example).
We do, but not to any great extent. In Santa Clara county, many of the youth facilities are like that. In fact there was one in the woods we inspected, very nice, more like a boarding school, gates were only closed and locked after dark. There certainly are more, but i agree- there should be a LOT more.
Look the article called them “customs” and the passegiata certainly qualifies. So do #s 5, *8, 12 and others.
Sounds very familiar to the Sunday drive back in the day. No place in particular. Just drive along county roads with everyone in the family. We may stop. We may not. We may find a place to eat, or not.
I gamed with Europeans almost exclusively from about 1999 onwards [some games more than others] and a few things struck me as interesting.
Dating- many times groups of people would hang out together and after a while they would havea couple separate off and ‘become an item’ - they didn’t ‘date around’ like we do here, they hang out in groups and then decide they might work out. Makes great sense though with the focus shifting to online communities, they don’t have gangs going out and hanging out at movies, restaurants or sorting events.
Multigenerational homes - again, kids living with their family til they go off to university or get a job out of the area, or opt to get married [though some folks still live with their families, large mutligenerational houses may give ‘suites’ or ‘apartments’ in the overall home to the young couple.
I drink neither, but I expect some people would prefer that the standard caffeine beverage offered would be tea instead of coffee.
There is the whole issue of how sports are organized: big-time sports closely associated with universities in the U.S plus a relatively small number of professional athletes–while in the UK and much of Europe there are a large number of local clubs.
The U.S. is large enough that it’s not really a single culture. I’m sure everything that Europeans do is done somewhere in the U.S. And probably the reverse.
