Uki Uki Chat! - Nonverbal Communication 

+Jack Laurence We may not always succeed, but we try. :) Thank you for the kind comment.

Unidentified User Thank you so much for the feedback! Very much appreciated.

BlackWidow36776 うれしいコメント、ありがとうございます。(^^)

xxHIMfanxoxo That's right, social etiquettes are super important in Japan. I'm so glad you found this discussion helpful! We hope to continue talking about this topic some more.

Supriya Gaikar コメントをありがとうございます！

IanMVB Souns like an interesting similarity, indeed! I hope I'll get a chance to visit Ireland one day or meet Irish people and experience it firsthand. :)

+Ana MaríaNieves Ramírez Torres Yes, "chotto" is such a useful and versatile word!

Abdulkadir Mersinli Absolutely. There's so much that you can express through body language, e.g. facial expressions, gestures, etc.

Of course Kurahara Sensei , people in Turkey use specific facial expressions, gestures, signals for non-verbal communication. I would like to admit that Turkish and Japanese languages come from the same family and I also found out that our body languages have a lot of in common. You can find many similar gestures in the languages all over the world, but they actually have different meanings .Thanks for reply.

CrazedsHideout Wow, I'm impressed to hear that you've picked up on bowing from anime! That's pretty cool. :)

Kurahara Sensei Hehe, thank you! It also impressed a lot of Japanese people when I went to Japan last month. Also that I can eat with chopsticks. Basically, it impressed them that I didn't live under a rock. ^_^;

CrazedsHideout i'm eating with chopsticks everything (even soups), my relatives got used to it, however other people think i'm weirdo, insane, or something like that. I'm starting to think that a freedom of habits is not as free as other people think. every time I pick chopsticks over a fork people demand the explanation why i'm doing it. or starting to say that i'll fail to use it properly and it will be ashaming for them. Do you have similar issues, or it's just me unlucky?

(Sorry it's long) a Person I just kinda go with whatever's the easiest to eat with. Chopsticks are far and away easier to clean than forks, so they became my staple utensil in college. Plus, I bought a set of 5 chopsticks but I only had 3 forks. So I had some college roommates that were confused at first, but most of them just played it off as my love of Japanese and Korean things rather than me hating to do dishes. That's also how the played off the fact that I bow sometimes. XD But when I went back home for summer, forks are the most widely available, so I switched to them. Though I did use chopsticks for ramen or if we were running low on forks. But yeah, I never really felt the social pressure. If I'm given chopsticks, I know how to use them properly. If I'm given a fork, I'll use that too. I think the active seeking out of chopsticks is what would throw people off. I live in China right now (I'm an English teacher), so it's pretty common place for me to use chopsticks every day. Some restaurants will give me forks instead of chopsticks because I'm a 174cm, blonde haired, light-eyed, white girl and obviously not Chinese, but a lot of places don't carry forks, so they're always delighted and amazed by the fact that I can use them properly. However, at the school I teach at, we're given 3 meals a day. And for each of the 3 meals, the only utensil we're given is a spoon. One of the other English teachers didn't know how to use chopsticks, so she started bringing chopsticks to lunch and dinner to practice. The Chinese teachers thought it was really weird and funny, but they got used to it when she explained why she was doing it. Soooo, I guess the point I'm trying to get at is to just do your own thing. I'm a kind of weird person to begin with, so my friend and family kind of brush off anything I do as being... well... me. If they ask why, just tell them that you're more comfortable with chopsticks if that's the truth. The less you care, the less others care.

CrazedsHideout thank you for the explanation :)

Kendra Carlson こちらこそ、ありがとうございました (^^)

Uatarreu That's certainly an interesting topic. Thank you for the suggestion!

コメントをありがとうございます！これからもよろしくお願いします。(^^)

a Person I would say hugging someone from behind is one of those things that you see more often in dramas and movies. In real life, Japanese people are (generally speaking) not too big on showing affection publicly.

Kurahara Sensei thank you for the clarification. it's something different from our European style of communication.

King Angus Humor is certainly a great topic! Thank you for your suggestion. :)

amdw コメントをありがとうございます！Yes, you wrote it perfectly :D

Сергей Алексанян コメントをありがとうございます！

Kawaii Anime Bunnies Yes, the same goes for Japanese dramas. (^^)

Exactly! I felt the same way.