Week 7 Post 2: Non-verbal Japan vs US

While I have not travelled around much of the United States, I did have the opportunity to go to Japan about three years ago. While I was there, I did notice a lot of different nonverbal displays, some obvious and some much more subtle. One big difference between American nonverbal communication and Japanese nonverbal communication is pointing. In America, pointing is very common hand gesture used to draw attention to a certain person of thing. In Japan, they do not point with one finger, and it is actually considered rude to do so. In Japan, they point with their whole hand and that is their way of nonverbally drawing attention to something.