"Today Show" anchor Ann Curry was once sent to Japan (her mother's birthplace) to do a "roots" piece for NBC. Some time after her arrival, Curry was asked why she had hugged her cousin so enthusiastically. "I liked him," she explained. Indeed, she liked everyone she had been hugging... Ann was soon embarrassed to learn that, in Japan, one only hugs other people with whom they are currently having sex!
and
Actor Nick Bakay once described what baseball trash talk sounds like in Japan: "The most-honored ancestors of your matriarch besmirched the season of the orange blossom!"
I liked this one allegedly from actess Liv Ullman
"I was born in a small hospital in Tokyo," Liv Ullman once recalled. "Mama says she remembers two things: a mouse ran across the floor, which she took as a sign of good luck, and a nurse bending down and whispering apologetically: 'I'm afraid it's a girl. Would you prefer to inform your husband yourself?'"
