Growing up, I spent most of my childhood living overseas because my mom worked for the Navy. I was born and raised in Japan and lived there for  the first ten years of my life. But after Japan, my mom got stationed in Washington State. Ironically, even though I had been an American citizen up to that point, I had yet to experience living in America. As I soon found out, America was a completely different place than Japan. Besides getting use to the new environment, the thing I had to get use to the most when I moved to the states was the culture. I was in complete culture shock when I arrived in Washington. For one, in the US, it seemed like everybody was expected to be able to speak your mind or express your opinion. In school, the teachers were always calling on students to say what they know or what they think. In Japan, the students were expected to just sit and listen to what the teachers say and not say anything.  Also, in the US, it seemed like everybody was expected to stand up for themselves.  If you don’t like something or someone is bothering you, then you say something. It wasn’t a big deal to say something or make a scene if you were standing up for yourself. But in Japan, it seemed that you always choose harmony instead of confrontation. It is looked down upon to create waves or say that you don’t like something . It is better to just keep it to yourself and remain quiet. These are just some of the major cultural differences that I noticed when I moved to US. But the thing that I got from all of this is that neither culture was better than the other. They are simply just different. No better, No worse.