I can’t type. Regarding Japan, “hide the mask of your own piss” was supposed to be “mask the sound of your pissing”.
And “would bow when saying thinks” = “would bow when saying thanks”.
In Hungary, when you have finished a meal in a restaurant, the check is brought over by a dedicated employee who also has with them a strapped-on bag of change, which they give you immediately – a great idea IMO.
In Finland, I was struck by the foot-scrapers outside all building doors, for scraping snow and slush from shoes. These are probably common in other places but I have never encountered them elsewhere.
In Helsinki, I spent an evening drinking beer in a park - often a neccessity because of the bar prices - with a group of friends who repeatedly tossed their empty bottles behind them onto the grass. Thinking this a bit out of order, they explained that they would be collected by less-fortunate members of society, who would sell them back to the brewery, thus recycling the bottles. All bottles have the year of manufacture imprinted on them but, despite being assured it was possible to find ones dating back to the late 1960s, the oldest I came across was from 1987.
Some of you would love my parents’ house. It is a large semi-detached house built in 1912 in Northern Ireland. It’s a little odd, even for there.
They don’t own a dryer (my mother objects to them for some reason), and have not only a whirligig drying stand in the garden, but also a drying room with shelves and a ceiling rack (the old fashioned kind that can be raised and lowered with a pulley). This room is also where the water boiler and hotpress are, so it’s always a bit warmer than the rest of the house. It’s where bedlinens and towels are stored too.
In addition they have a separate room for the toilet, so that the main bathroom ony has a sink, shower cublicle and bath in it, while the toilet is next door in a little room of its own. Handy when 6 people live in a house with only one bathroom, and 3 of those people were teenage girls who liked long luxurious baths.
They also have a room built onto the back of the house, but not accessible from inside it. It has a sink, toilet and shelving, and is used to store jackets, wellington boots, golf clubs, hiking equipment etc.
There is a pantry cupboard in the space under the stairs, adjacent to the kitchen. It is also lined with shelves, and is where my mother keeps dry goods, canned food, dog food, toilet paper and cleaning supplies.
We reckon that when they eventually sell the house the new owners will convert the linen room to a second bathroom and the understairs pantry to a downsatirs toilet, which would make the house much more normal.
The reason this stuck me as so weird is…wouldn’t you naturally want to do the actual laundry in that room too? Or do you? In Canada, my mom has a big laundry room downstairs where she has the ironing board, clotheslines and drying stands, but she also has a giant double sink and a washer/dryer in there. So it’s the laundry room. If your mom is doing the laundry in the drying room, then it won’t sound as exotic to me since it would basically be a laundry room. But if she isn’t…where’s she doing the laundry? And why isn’t she doing it in there where all the laundry stuff is? I’m not sure if it’s the expression “drying room” that’s throwing me off, or if it is a case of having a whole other room just for drying.
Where I live in Toronto we are not supposed to hang laundry on the balconies and our curtains are supposed to be white or off white facing out. That’s because I live in a rental apartment and they are trying to not let the place look like poor people live here. A lot of people do it anyway. We just keep it low. If I put a rack outside, nobody can see. So I will not be able to go get a bamboo pole and experiment. 
I was thinking last night that Canadian Tire is kind of unique. I wonder if other countries have such a prominent chain of automotive supply stores that everyone and his mother uses on a regular basis. They sell other hardware and household things too, but most of the store is automotive supplies and camping/sporting stuff. One would think the average non car/camping person would never go to a place like that, but everyone I know uses Canadian Tire on a regular basis and I wonder if they have a popular chain specializing in that stuff outside Canada? Now you can get automotive stuff at Walmart or other places, but Canadian Tire still thrives. I don’t know if they have a chain like that other places? They also sell snowshoes. I’m not sure who buys them but you can get them there and someone must be buying them. If I lived somewhere else, I have no idea where I would go when I lose a gas cap or … need an engine block heater. Or fishing line, extension cords, mops, Armor-All. I would imagine that if there were no Canadian Tire I would not notice, yet I am there at least six times a year.
We used to have foot-scrapers outside buildings in Western Canada - they seem to have fallen out of fashion. We used to all use clotheslines to dry clothes, too - clothes really do smell much better when dried outside. If you went to a small prairie town, you would still see many clotheslines. And gardens, too. Every house used to have a garden.
Here in Calgary (I don’t know about other Canadian cities) it is a fairly common practice to leave recyclables on the outside of garbage cans downtown for the garbage pickers who are looking for cans and bottles to recycle for a bit of cash.
Nope, the linen room is just for drying.
This is because, what with the shelving, there’s only about 3 feet of floor space. All of the walls are covered with deep shelves, and the floor space is just big enough for the drying rack to be lowered and loaded.
Dirty laundry is put in the big laundry bin in the bathroon. Then mum sorts it and does the laundry in the washing machine in the kitchen and either hangs it outside or in the linen room. Once it’s dry she’ll take it upstairs to the top landing (the house has 3 floors), where she has her ironing board and sewing machine and which is basically mending central. There she’ll do the ironing and any necessary repairs while listening to the radio. Then it gets put on its owner’s bed for them to put away.
What this means is that
- my mother spends a large part of her day running up and down stairs
- everything is kept out of sight of guests
- mum’s system is so labour intensive as to be unique
Certainly, and thank you.
I think you confused the accessory with the sting or yarn that little kids used to wear through on sleeve up across the back and down the other sleeve. With clips on the end. This functions similarly, but is designed for those times in severe conditions where there may not be a safe place to put a mitten. And for conditions wherein you sure as hell would not want to loose it in the snow, or have it blow away.
I did take offense to the Oh Phleeze, who do you think you’re kidding statement. It did not sound like ‘teasing’.
Apology accepted.
Onward.
There are clouds below our house in the valley tonight. About a mile away I would say. It’s beautiful, but already, snow has dusted the peaks. The last snow fell at our house in early June, I think it was the 10th. And now, only the beginning of August, you can feel a change in the air. Summer is coming to an end.
I have a running joke with my family about what day summer is. I am exaggerating, we do have a few months of beautiful sunny weather. And winter days can be stunningly bright, clear and just beautiful. But snow can, and does fall in any month.
Your mom is using four rooms for laundry and one of them’s the kitchen!!! I think you need to stage an intervention.
There’s a sig in there somewhere. Or a Tarentino movie title. 
While we’re hijacking: I dunno if it’s just me, but the title of this thread seems to evoke The Thunderbirds. In a base built under an island, the hi-tech INTERNATIONAL LAUNDRY is on call, 24/7,
A couple of other differences I just thought of…
In Chicago about ten years ago, I boarded a Greyhound bus to Madison, Wisconsin. When I got my bus ticket, there was a seat reservation and boarding pass for that particular departure, like an airplane. This is not done in Canada, where you can buy your ticket at a random time beforehand and just line up outside the bus when it’s time to go. Seating on the bus is first come, first served.
In Finland I was totally confused by the system of indicating municipal address numbers on buildings. Each building had a standardised small cubical lamp with the number on it, rather than having the number in large figures on, next to, or over the door. There was also a system of assigning addresses that I never fully understood, even after it was explained to me here on the SDMB.
That reminds me…
Here in Sydney, a sprawling city of huge geographical area but low population density (a bit like a slightly smaller LA), we have about five hundred suburbs. Most overseas cities of similar size seem to have much, much fewer, apparently. There are some houses not far from where I live marked “1*** Canterbury Road”, and the four digit house number is enough of a rarity in Australia for passers-by to comment on it. In the US, huge street numbers seem to be the norm (“Hey, I’m at 45656845623 Maple!” ), but here when each new suburb kicks in, the numbers go back to “1”, and you seldom get more than a mile or so out of a suburb, meaning usually a couple of hundred in the house number, maximum.
A visiting Canadian asked me once, “Why did you do this to your city?” But I like it. Well, I’m used to it. I like that if you tell a Sydneysider a suburb name, he or she will be able to drive to within walking distance of where you want them to be, even if they mess up the street address. I’ve often wondered how big these US suburbs are.
Uh, they started adding colors two years ago. You haven’t seen a twenty or a fifty that has color? Tens are next.
Seehere
Yeah, but they all look to be pretty much the same color when you are looking at them in your wallet. It really doesn’t do anything to help identify different denominations.
I read this as Strap On. That would be a very interesting dining experience. [size=1] you dopers have turned me more into a dev.
England & Movies
Not sure if this is everywhere or just a specific movie theater, but you reserve your exact seats for the show and pay two pence more for posh ( cushy) seats.
I thought that was a great idea.
I’ll have you know that 5 digits is the biggest one I’ve ever seen.
Last weekend I passed 21065 Leslie Street in Keswick, north of Toronto. Leslie Street may pass through a dozen towns, cities, and rural areas getting there on its way north from the lake, but by Og the numbering’s continuous! 
TLD, then you give a postal address, do you give the suburb name or the town/city name, or both?
The difference, it seems to me, is that Australians and Americans have different conceptions of what constitutes “the city,” for the purposes of naming and postal addresses.
For example, if you live in Sydney, then you actually have to be right in the heart of the Central Business District for your official address to actually say “Sydney.” You might live only ten minutes’ walk from downtown and still have an official address that says “Darlinghurst” or “Surry Hills” or “Kings Cross” or “Ultimo.” These areas might fall under the authority of Sydney City Council, but for postal and general addressing purposes, each place uses its own name.
But if Sydney were a US city, chances are that those places would all have the address “Sydney,” and that the other names would just be considered “neighbourhood” names. Even after the City of Sydney and the City of South Sydney council areas merged to form a larger city area, the City of Sydney is still a relatively small geographic area, at only 26.15 square kilometers, or about 10.1 square miles. By contrast, the city of San Francisco is about 49 square miles, and Baltimore is about 87 square miles. And in each of those cities, anyone living within those relatively large city limits has an official address that says “San Francisco” or “Baltimore.”
I live in a neighbourhood called Oakenshawe, and if someone in Baltimore asks me where i live, then that’s what i tell them. But my official address, for all postal, government, taxation, and other purposes is “Baltimore.”
Interestingly enough, it does seem that there is an American city whose naming and addressing practices are somewhat closer to Sydney’s. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, that city is another sprawling metropolis, Los Angeles. The City of Los Angeles is huge, covering more than 450 square miles. And within that huge city are many districts. If you are writing a letter, some of these districts get their own name on the envelope, while others just get “Los Angeles.” My wife lived in LA for a while,in the district of Los Feliz, and she said that all her mail came addressed to “Los Angeles.” She had a friend who lived in the district of Hancock Park, who also usreceived mail addressed “Los Angeles.” By contrast, other districts such as Hollywood and Sherman Oaks, which are still within the boundaries of LA City, tend to get their own names on addressed mail.
Reading the entry for the Greater Los Angeles Area on Wikipedia suggests that distinct boundaries and administrative entities are a pretty complicated issue in the LA region. My wife said that, in her experience, most people who live there probably couldn’t tell you where the City officially starts and finishes. Looking at the map of LA City, i find that quite understandable.
That was probably all as clear as mud, but it might give you some idea of how things are done differently.
China:
I couldn’t take the kids in my class on a picnic where we served hot food(KFC). It was summer and all the Chinese staff said, “The children can’t eat hot food outside on a hot day! It’s bad for their internal temperature!”
Chinese also like to take their shoes off in the house(something I, from Michigan, like) and they provide little slippers for you to wear in the house. Best of both worlds.
Restaurants in China are over-abundant and cheap. Chinese men will sit at the restaurant and eat and drink for more than 3 hours. I love it.
Japan:
It’s another country that’s big on no shoes inside the house. There were even a few temples that had you take off your shoes before you enter.
There were a lot of things you have to remember about bathrooms. First of all, when you use the toilet, which is in a separate room than the rest of the bathroom, you have to wear toilet slippers. You have to wear them while in the bathroom and take them off before you leave. Second, when using public restrooms, there may not be any paper towel dispensers, so many Japanese carry around hankerchiefs to dry their hands with. The showers were unusual but nice- instead of a fixed showerhead than comes out of the wall, there’s a hose that you use while seated.
The vending machines. Oh, the vending machines… they sell everything: candy, ice cream, hot and cold drinks including beer, cigarettes, food. There are some unusual ones like one in the hotel lobby that sold underwear (new), and we heard rumors of other machines that sold used schoolgirls panties, although I think it was more urban legend than anything else.
All of the beds were very hard. What do they have against comfortable mattresses?
Italy:
When I visited, there were porto-potty type toilets in some areas, but they were much nicer than in the US. Instead of a dank little plastic prison where someone inevitably took a huge dump right before you arrived, the ones in italy were bigger, brighter, and after you left a sprinkler turned on to clean up a little bit. They cost money, but they were completely worth it.