The whole pizza or a slice of pizza??

We had a culture bump in Houston. During class our teacher held up a poster and said, “Japanese see the whole thing and Americans look at the person or thing.” We were surprised, curious and interested – wondering why there is a difference between the two people in their focus.

The universal situation is describing something or comparing something. We knew that Japanese people look at the whole picture. We Japanese find stability from having all the information. When Japanese people look at the whole picture, we feel comfortable and we find stability by being the same as other people. But we didn’t know how Americans find stability, so we went out to do a survey with a questionnaire. We found that, on the other hand, American people find stability by having connections with family or friends and by being different from them.

We asked 9 or 10 Americans and many of them talked about family time and relationships with friends. Some people also talked about financial things like money and food. We also showed the Americans two pictures to see if they really look at the main person and all 9 people explained the middle person as the main focus. We we learned how different people from different cultures all have different eyes to see different things. We all have a different way of seeing things. Check out our video

- by Jonah Higaonna, Ryuku Akamine, Taku Kinjo, Koya Kakazu

(July 29, 2015)