Unwritten Rules

Unwritten Rules was Originally Posted on February 11, 2014 by lavarock

I too have decided to blog about “unwritten rules”.

Since moving to Hawaii, I have learned a few of these “unwritten” insider procedures. I list a few here.

1) When driving, if you see cars start to pull over behind or in front of you, be prepared to pull over also. Oftentimes ambulances do not use sirens as there may be only 1 road and the noise might be too much for residents. People automatically pull over and wait for the ambulance to pass, then pull back into the same order they were in. It makes so much sense, yet does not happen in many other places. I have talked with firefighters from the mainland who are amazed this happens AS IT SHOULD!

2) When standing in line at the supermarket or post office, be prepared to wait a bit while the person ahead of you chats with the clerk or another shopper. Visitors are often in a hurry and become irritated for some reason. They come to visit where the pace is slower, then complain because the pace slows down. The person chatting knows there are people waiting and will usually just hug and chat for just a minute.

3) Many of us wear “slippers” (flip flops) and some are rather expensive. Still, when visiting someones house, we remove them (in Japanese style) when we enter, even if the person says we don’t have to. This particular island has a lot of sand and ground black rock which can get caught in carpets and scratch hardwood floors.

4) We have a thing here called “hanai” which can best be explained as an unofficial adoption of someone, whether younger or older. It is more than a friendship and partly because your own family may be a quarter a world away. You become an unofficial part of a family with no real fanfare. It can start as being invited to a wedding or funeral for someone related to the family.

5) When driving, you may see someone trying to enter traffic from a driveway or side street. It is not unusual to slow down and wave the person into traffic ahead of you. It would be very unusual for the person behind you to be irritated or tap their horn. That type of person would normally be a visitor from the mainland who is not familiar with the courtesy of letting people in ahead of you.

These are just a few of the unwritten rules people out here live by.