More appropriately, this post could be titled "Japanese things that should be but aren't the same as back home" but it didn't really have a very appealing ring to it.
There are many things here that by all practical purposes should be the same as they are back home. Naturally between countries things vary considerably but there are things that often I wonder why they're different at all. This post has actually been sitting in my "draft" folder for months now waiting for me to compile a good list, but I'm left with only one. So I might as well just talk about that.
Here, when you open a bottle of soda (pop, coke, carbonated beverage) it makes a different sound than back home. I figured things like Coke would be especially similar between countries, since its production is controlled at some level by the all-powerful Coca-Cola god.
I know this sounds stupid, but really, it makes a different sound. Back home you open a bottle and it makes something of a "fizz" sound. I'll approximate it by saying "fwssshhh" because that's the sound it makes. Here, you open the bottle and it literally goes "pop!" A single sudden popping sound, no fizzing, and that's the end of the opening experience. I can only assume it can be attributed to differences in carbonation tactics but still...
...weird eh?