Just Post

Americans are also known for being really direct (YMMV; southerners are a lot more indirect, where West Coasters would much rather that you just tell them to get fucked than pretend that you like them). OTOH, from my experience hosting students from East Asia, they tend to be at the opposite end of directness. It took us half the school year to get the kid from Hong Kong to open up, start talking and joking without being prompted and be comfortable telling us mildly uncomfortable things (like if he was unhappy about something). We've had two Japanese students as well, and it's always been a constant struggle to get them to tell us if there's a problem; they prefer to reach out to a program supervisor instead of telling us directly, and one of them was so bad about indirectness that it felt like he was constantly lying to us. It turns out that differences in directness cause a lot more issues than I would have guessed.