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I spent a month in Germany in the mid-90's as a high school student. At the time, Bay Watch was big thing, and the (friendly, nice) people I met had a pretty t

I spent a month in Germany in the mid-90's as a high school student. At the time, Bay Watch was big thing, and the (friendly, nice) people I met had a pretty tough time wrapping their heads around the idea that my experience, living in California, did not include warm beaches, that I didn't surf, etc. It's really easy to pick up caricatures of life in foreign countries. I don't think anyone is immune to imaging that foreigners are more exotic and strange than they really are. I remember someone on an American forum confidently saying that in anime, a character's family owning a car was supposed to indicate great wealth because car ownership was super rare in Japan -- a vast exaggeration of a minor demographic difference.

veddox 8y ago
> It's really easy to pick up caricatures of life in foreign countries. I'm a German who's lived abroad for the majority of his life. This statement is so true. I've heard of Africans asking if Hitler was still in power, Americans thinking Germans all lived in castles, and Germans wondering whether we had electricity in Zambia. If you've never lived there, how can you know? I have dozens of American friends and frequently read American publications. I daresay I have some understanding of US culture from this exposure - but even so I still don't know what it's like to actually live in the United States.