Breaking a social norm, the author greeted random people on campus with "good evening" in the morning. Most people ignored the unusual greeting or looked puzzled. However, a group of girls smiled and asked if he had just arrived from overseas, assuming his mixed greeting was due to jet lag. A guy kindly explained that it was morning, not evening. While an awkward experiment, the author enjoyed learning how people in different cultures respond to broken social conventions.

1. Breaking Social Norm
Every country have national characters. For instance, my undefined image of American
characters are individualistic, self-assertive, lazy in sometime but they are social and
humorous in general. As I am a Japanese, my undefined image of Japanese
characteristics are over working, unassertive, shy but I think we are kind and polite. Well
these characteristics are just few examples. There are a lot more to describe their good
and bad characteristics for both countries. Anyway, for the social norm I did simple thing
which is to say “good evening” in the morning for random people in the campus. Why I
chose to do this, is because exchanging greeting is one of the simplest thing in human
society. So I wanted to know how people react if I gave a strange greeting. I did it to 10
people. Most of people ignored or looked at me with puzzled. However, a group of two
girls and one guy got interested in my greeting. A group of two girls smiled and asked
me “You’ve just got here from oversea? I did not get why they ask me that so I ask them
back “What do you mean by that?” then they said because they noticed that I am an
international student at first sight so they thought I got a jet lag during on the way back
from home. Another thing is that a guy thought I miss understood the meaning of
evening therefore he kindly told me that “it is not time to say good evening it is time to
say good morning”. It was kind of awkward moment but I enjoyed this experiment
overall. I am pretty sure if I do this experiment in Japan, 10 out of 10 people will ignore
me.