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Y’know, AJ, one of the things that was so stressful to me when I first moved to San Francisco was how everything is so restricted as far as space. So I’d be in a grocery store and I’d, y’know, the aisles were so narrow and there’d be a lot of people and nobody’s even concerned with, y’know, being polite and, y’know, saying excuse me if you bump into them or people are just standing in front of you. It’s just really stressful. Or parking here in San Francisco is a huge issue. I’m glad I don’t own a car because it’s really difficult to find parking. And if you do own a car and you don’t have a garage that comes with your apartment you’ve got to pay extra for, y’know, parking space. And apartments are smaller here, and…

Hm.

…we don’t have bigger restaurants, everything. Y’know, we’re on such a…we’re in, basically San Francisco, it’s a peninsula and it’s what, I think seven miles by seven miles so it’s a small area with a lot of buildings and people crammed into it so space is a luxury.

Yeah, and it reminds me a bit of living in Japan because Japan’s the same way. Of course, in most of America we’re used to having lots and lots of space.

Yes.

And so, I find it, and I still like it…I still like to have lots of personal space. I like larger open areas and even though I’ve been living in cities and even in Japan, it still stresses me out to be crammed in to these tiny spaces. In Japan it’s even worse than San Francisco. The people are a bit smaller than Americans and it just has a, y’know, very high population density.

Yeah.

So that everywhere you go I just feel like there’re constantly people pushing in, in public. And I never have any room. We go to the grocery store, for example, if Tomoe, my wife, is shopping and I’m just waiting…

Yeah.

…oh, I hate it because there’s nowhere, I can’t stand anywhere where someone’s not pushing past me or bumping up against me. And I just start getting stressed out like, ugh, I need some space.

Oh that’s interesting because I don’t remember that from Hiroshima but Hiroshima’s smaller than Kyoto.

Yeah, Kyoto’s a bigger city, for sure.

Yeah. But, yeah, it’s nice whenever I go back to visit my family in Georgia, y’know, you’ve…of course, my mom loves Walmart so there’s always a Walmart trip. Actually, usually once a day she’ll go it seems like. But you go and there’s a massive parking lot. And it’s so funny because she’ll be driving around, driving around trying to find the spot that’s closest to the door so she doesn’t have to walk very far. And then there’s this store, now they’re…I mean we already have the big box stores, right? But now they’re even like mega size.

Yeah, yeah.

So they’ve got to, y’know, a typical Walmart has a grocery in it now as well as like an auto shop and then the normal part of Walmart, and restaurants…y’know, you go and just huge…

Banks, branches inside even in a Walmart, it’s just yeah, they just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Yeah, yeah, right, banks are, right, I forgot about that. But, yeah, and you go to a restaurant and usually they’re, they’re huge, y’know. Here it’s, you might, for a really good restaurant, there’s probably sometimes there’s a line out the door. There’s going to be a wait.

Mm.

And you can…I’m with my parents we can just drive right up to the restaurant and just walk on in. There might be a little bit of a wait, maybe 5, 10 minutes, but usually it’s…you get seated right away.

Yeah, which is, also I don’t…something I still haven’t adjusted to is I hate waiting for…to get into places. Standing in line, it’s kind of a, I guess it’s a city thing…

Yeah.

…which I don’t like. I like that, the more space where you can just walk in immediately, it’s quite nice.

Right.

I think it’s more in general I just, there are lots of things I do like about the having more space because America’s a big country and even though our population’s going up and up, we have lots of land, tons of land and so…

Yes.

Most places you go, like when I visit my family in Indiana, there’s just so much room. Everything just feels so big and open and there’s…

Yes, well, that’s the thing, there is so much room so everything, what I’ve been describing about everything being so big, that’s typical of America and I think it’s a stereotype. It’s typical suburban America, actually, even a lot of cities other than San Francisco, maybe New York, there’s space. So we have bigger cars.

Mm-hm.

We have…we’ve got the Big Gulp.

Yeah, big, the food sizes…

At 7-Eleven.

The food servings are bigger.

The food servings are bigger, yeah. That’s…that’s so funny. I wonder if they have Big Gulp at the 7-Elevens in Thailand.

Yeah, just not…I know in Japan, again, the servings, like a large in Japan is equal to a small size in America.

Yeah.

For a drink, for example, you get a large drink in Japan is about the size of a small drink in the United States. And housing, I mean, y’know, our apartment in Japan is tiny…tiny, tiny, tiny. And, of course, places even in San Francisco they’re bigger than in Japan; but then in the rest of the country, of course - like my sister’s house in Indiana is huge.

Yeah, what, two garages and…

Two, well, two…

Eight bedrooms or something like that?

Not eight, but I don’t know, four or some plus bedrooms and a huge basement with several rooms and then a four-car garage and a whole separate guesthouse. I mean, that’s larger than normal obviously because her husband makes good money but…but still, even just, y’know, the average middle class house is quite large compared to I think a lot of other countries.

Yeah, yeah, well, that’s really big what you’re describing.

Yeah, personal space, too, y’know, I know that typically, too, Americans we like personal space meaning every culture there’s sort of a norm…

Yeah.

…for how close you can get to each other when you’re talking to feel comfortable, especially with strangers, people you don’t know.

Yes.

So, for Americans it’s a fairly large space. We like to have a good amount of space around us.

Because we’re used to that.

Yeah.

That’s how most people, if you’re not in San Fran…if you didn’t grow up in San Francisco or New York, you grew up with that kind of space.

Yeah, and it makes…whatever that is, y’know, in some countries people will get quite close to each other, almost nose to nose and that’s normal. The people are comfortable with it. But for me it’s about, it’s arm’s length…

Yeah, for me, too.

Right, yeah, put your arm out and tip of the finger, that’s where I want people to stand.

Yeah.

There or farther.

Right, right.

And if they start getting closer then I get, I start getting stressed.

Yeah.

And like, and start backing up, like, okay…

Right.

Stay out of my personal space.

Right. Y’know, going back to the food, I don’t remember, maybe it was in Japan, I can remember…or even Thailand, seeing…going in a pizza place and seeing their large, their large size pizza would be like…

Yeah, like a medium.

Like a small medium even.

Small medium.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s so different.

Mm-hm.

But I don’t think it’s good to have that much served to you because when you do a lot of times people will eat all of that then.

Yeah, with the food it’s excessive for…

It can be, yeah.

I think that in most places it has become quite excessive in the United States that the servings are just enormous and far beyond what we really need to eat. Y’know, some aspects of, like I said the personal space, I like that. I like the more openness physically but…but then there are downsides like with the food. People just eat too much.

Yeah.

Mm-hm.

Which probably, y’know, it’s…it’s no secret. I think, y’know, Americans have or America has a stereotype of having large people, people who are overweight.

Yeah, right.

So…

Yeah, eating too much and the quality of the food, too.

The quality of the food’s not, yeah, not very good.

Yeah, yes, indeed. Oh well, it’s a big country in many ways. Hi this is Cristin Dods. and this is Joe Wise. And we just wanted to let you know that this material has been copy righted by Learn real English LLC . www.learnrealenglish.com