Japan is not America

Well, duh. Living here, though, it's the little things I notice, the kind of stuff that doesn't exactly leap off of cnn.com and into your living room.
Take hot water, for example. A device called a tempering valve is used on hot water heaters to mix enough cold water with the hot from the heater to keep the outgoing water temperature fixed, often set to 50°C (122°F) in the U.S. I'm not sure if this is just industry standard, or if it is regulated by law to keep our lawsuit-thirsty country from scalding ourselves and subsequently suing water heater companies into the ground, but it's the case either way.
Japan doesn't quite roll that way...if you turn on the hot water tap, the resulting output is really fucking stupid hot. I kid you not, I had a first degree burn on my hand from a drop of water that splashed from the sink onto my skin. I couldn't even run my razor under hot water and touch it to my face to shave in the morning; I had to turn on the cold tap just as strong as the hot to make that basic everyday activity manageable.
Moral of the story? Don't mess with Japanese plumbing, or you will be punished.

Here's another one for ya - Japan doesn't seem to believe in clothes dryers. Everyone hangs their clothes out to dry, whether they live in a sprawling country estate or an apartment the size of a shoebox. This has resulted in a disturbing national pastime, the stealing of womens' underwear. As if it wasn't enough to sell used schoolgirl panties in vending machines...
Trust me, I really wish I was making that one up.