Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyororin
I definitely agree about the "having people stop by" thing. At the VERY least, call at least an hour before if you`re going to just come to the door, and a day ahead if you expect to be let in.
Houses are private. Ultra-super private. I can count the number of times someone who doesn`t live here has come into my house on my fingers.
People tend to judge people on their homes, and expect to be judged on theirs. So it is very important to be ready for someone to visit. Someone suddenly stopping by and coming in is pretty awful as it gives you no chance to get ready. As most people do not keep their homes in an always-ready state, it is extremely rude to just show up out of the blue.
So... Meeting outside is much much easier. If someone does just show up at my door, they don`t expect to be let in, so I end up going out and talking to them outside the front door. It`s just how things are. Home is a private nest.
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We used to have dinner parties at our house quite often. As we had renovated the house and had a great kitchen with commercial oven/cooktop it was a pleasure to have people over to enjoy some good food. Our Japanese friends were very impressed with when we roasted say a whole leg of lamb and sliced it at the table. I loved having people over mainly because I love cooking.
We had plenty of foreign friends who would just drop by if they were in the area and never had an issue with it. Neither of us are overly house proud. Even if having people over for a planned event we didn't ever worry about having the place spotless. If it was really dirty we'd just get a cleaner in as we both really hate housework.
We were well aware though of the issue Japanese people have with you just turning up and never really did it. We did have one family who we were very close to and we would occasionally if we were walking by their house (they lived close to us). They never appeared to have any problem with it but as I say we were really good friends.