Sometimes, when trying to gleam differences between the cultures of where you live and other countries, it can help to start with a topic that’s familiar to you. This way, you’re not immediately thrown into aspects of life that you might be unfamiliar with, where the differences would lose all sense of relativity or meaning.
Instead, start with something that you might enjoy, such as sport, for example. Sport is something that’s enjoyed all over the world, but different countries take different attitudes towards sport. These attitudes might be in regards to how people interact with it, but it could also be to do with which sport is favored above the rest.
USA
When you think about the most popular sports in the USA, you likely have a few candidates that come to mind – Football, baseball, and basketball, as a few examples. However, the first of these options stands as the one that is frequently cited as being the most favored by the populace.
It’s not hard to see this reflected in various elements of life itself, with college NCAA football being something that much attention is given towards and side activities. The NFL has hosted 2 games during Thanksgiving Day since 1966 and 3 NFL games during primetime since 2006.
In 2022 these three games will be:
- Buffalo Bills vs vs Detroit Lions
- New York Giants vs Dallas Cowboys
- New England Patriots and Minnesota Vikings.
Many NFL fans like to visit a sportsbook in the US to bet on these games during the holiday season.
UK
If you’re someone who lives in the United States, you might first turn to a country that is quite similar to your own in many ways. However, this similarity is not reflected in the choice of sport, which unsurprisingly shrugs off Football in favor of a different game sharing the same name, referred to as ‘soccer’ in the US.
With a variety of leagues and stadiums all over the country, you won’t be in the UK long without noticing the affinity that the nation has for this sport and how much passion Brits have for their favorite teams.
India
There is another sport in the UK with a lot of popularity behind it, though, one that you might encounter there by the name of cricket. This sport might be one that’s unfamiliar to an American audience, but it certainly won’t be to an Indian one. In fact, cricket often ranks as the most popular sport in India, where the nation’s cricket fans carry a sincere passion for the sport.
While you might be somewhat familiar with games like soccer, cricket might be one that you’ve had minimal exposure to, so brushing up on what a standard cricket game looks like could help introduce you to something new.
Japan
What might surprise you is finding a sport that’s popular in the USA favored in a part of the world that you might not expect. Such could be the case in Japan, where baseball is often referred to as the most popular sport in the country – especially in Japanese middle and high schools, where it’s a popular extra-curricular activity.
Within your own culture, this might be something that you deeply associate with being typically American, so finding out the history of how this came to be so popular in Japan might lead you towards learning something about the sport that you didn’t know previously – potentially enriching your interest in both the sport and the various locations in which it’s played regularly.
