SenorMysterioso, yes we do. Another thing we do in the US is play jokes on other people on April first. Prime targets are unsuspecting Canadians, as everyone knows.
Even though this guy is there experiencing the culture and all that good stuff, you have to take his explanations with a grain of salt. There are too many cultural nuances in everyday life for somebody from another culture to fully comprehend. It reminds me of a history book I had to read in college that in order to illustrate this point, the author wrote a short (fictional) piece where John Smith (the one of Jamestown) described what was going on in a game of baseball; a game that had yet to be invented and that no one had explained to him. His assumptions ran from spot on correct to completely absurd and false. A foreigner's explanation of the how and why of many things in a different culture have about the same rate of accuracy in my experience. Thank you, Andy Yang for clarifying and correcting some of John’s— ahem, I mean Joel’s commentary.
BTW, Pocari Sweat is awesome and if the name really scares you that much, you are the type that is best suited to just staying home and eating the safe stuff like Coke and Doritos. Man, I could really go for some CoolPis right now...
In the writer's defense, most people ARE ignorant when it comes to other cultures. And since someone called him out on his comments about the amount of rice that Taiwanese eat, I'll speak to that. The beleif that Asians eat a lot of rice is not a stereotype, but the complete truth. In fact, I wonder if the author is eating in the right places and with the right people, if he is not eating a lot of rice anywhere in Asia. Having lived there for years, I know, for expample, that in Korea rice is the focal point of the whole meal and everything else just a side dish. An example from Japan, would be sushi which refers to the rice as it is eaten in that style and NOT the raw fish (sashimi). Rice is a huge part the diet all over Asia, to the point here in America we really don't have anything that compares. (Except maybe Mountain Dew in Appalachia)
I used to believe that the Luke/Leia kissing was done because Lucas didn't know where he was going with the story. Now I see that it's just because he's a perv and was planning on going down a path that I'm glad the Star Wars movies did not actually go down...
I love the flavored peeps that they've come up with recently. Vanilla and chocolate flovered, particularly.
BTW, Pocari Sweat is awesome and if the name really scares you that much, you are the type that is best suited to just staying home and eating the safe stuff like Coke and Doritos. Man, I could really go for some CoolPis right now...