On Minutiae

VINCENT: You know what the funniest thing about Europe is?
JULES: What?
VINCENT: It's the little differences. I mean they got the same shit over there that they got here, but it's just, just there it's a little different.

("Pulp Fiction")

While this quote is not entirely apt (there is "some shit" over here that is not the same but rather not present back home), I think that it remains relevant.

1. While the cost of living is overall similar to many cities in the global North, some shit is by fluke randomly expensive, and some is inexplicably cheap. Oranges are at least 3 times as expensive in as in the US, while I can get wild mushrooms at 1/6th the price of what things are back home. This is pretty readily explicable in terms of proximity to points of production. However, one odd thing is that consumer electronics cost drastically more. A PC laptop will typically cost $1000 for a middle of the line unit. Macs are similarly priced, likely due to the company's ubiquitous price-fixing. I'm really close to where this stuff is manufactured.
2. Clothing dryers are not typically used (nor are ovens for that matter). I now have to plan my day more meticulously. :P
3. Coughing and clearing one's throat loudly are totally cool, but one must be highly discrete about blowing one's nose, particularly if it will make a noticeable noise.
4. Traffic lights function differently: red lights even with walking signs express something closer to "yield" to vehicles (I needed discover this but once :P).
5. Overall traffic norms are different--people are more apt to poke into spaces tentatively.
6. People also honk the horns on their vehicles more often but do so to express information rather than dismay or anger.
7. Stoves have gas valves that must be turned on and off prior to and following use. The purported rationale is to reduce the risk of explosion. Do Koreans have special stoves that are more likely to leak gas when off? :P
8. Eating is drastically communal. One rarely sees someone eating a meal alone, and if a student, for example, brings a snack, he or she will share with you, even if the item is difficult to divide up.
9. The sense of personal space is somehow different. This is not to say that it's larger or smaller in some global sense, but people seem to move toward or away from each other with a different rhythm. I haven't yet decoded this system.
10. Hosts and hostesses are drastically common. There are employees to greet and organize lines at banks, supermarkets, and even the equivalent of the DMV.