It's been a while since the last Q & A...I'd apologize, but I blame you lot. After all, whose questions am I supposed to be answering? It wouldn't be as much fun if I just made up my own. But I've been holding out on yakuza for a long time, so here goes.
How long does it take you to run an errand that would take five minutes in the US?
This one comes from a friend who recently (and similarly temporarily) moved to Italy. I gathered that it was taking her a lot longer to get simple things done there, but never got her to give me the reason for it -- language barrier, cultural difference, or something else. For my part, I'd have to say it depends. I don't have that many errands to run (no dry cleaning!), but I haven't had any real problems so far. The toughest thing so far was finding a place to get my film (yes, my "real" camera is still film) developed. At first I thought it was a language barrier, but on the other hand, I was carrying around a roll of film with me as a visual aid, so how confused could people have been? It turns out that there actually just aren't that many places to develop slide and/or B&W film here. I did eventually find one, and had no problems getting everything developed and put on DVD. Finding most things is a matter of wandering across them or asking the right people -- I haven't seen a phone book here yet, and probably wouldn't be able to use it if I were to find one anyway!

Some things are more convenient than at home. Food, for example, is available everywhere -- on the street, in local wet markets and 24-hr stores, in supermarkets, at indoor fruit stands, in the subway (yes, really... apart from the little stalls in the subway stations themselves, I've seen people selling cherries from baskets in the walkway).
What's the biggest difference, or what have you found surprisingly difficult to accept? What's odd?
I don't know that I pinpoint anything as really odd per se; Shanghai's not particularly different from a lot of other Asian cities (including ones that I'm familiar with), so things that might strike someone as strange on their first trip to the continent are pretty normal to me. For example, unless you really live entirely in Western-oriented stores and buildings, you carry your own pack of tissues everywhere; they double as toilet paper and napkins, because those aren't provided in a lot of places. It's just how it is, and it's usually logical, just different. MaxiMe was kind of odd, but that's about it.
As far as what's different, there's always the obvious: there are a lot of people here. As in a ridiculous amount, and they all seem to spend the weekends downtown shopping or otherwise clogging up the sidewalks (I walk fast; clogged sidewalks are mildly annoying to me). Something I just started to notice recently -- you know how babies in the US come with a lot of stuff (or seem to)? Not here -- I've seen maybe 5 strollers in over 2 months, and only one or two of those belonged to non-Westerners. However, I've seen a lot of babies being carried on hips, arms, stomachs, backs (and sometimes like potato sacks), bicycles, and motorcycles.
Things like this make me notice as much what we take for granted in the US as anything about life here. Safety laws are another example (can I get a "T-O-R-T!" from the lawyers in the house?) -- I went to the aquarium in Hangzhou. It's on the small side, but kinda nifty in its own right. It took me a couple minutes to notice what felt different: not all of the tanks were insulated from the public (or vice versa). Yup, the glass on some of them stopped about 5 feet above the floor... a good height for a miscreant teenager who wanted to stick his or her hand in to see what the Amazonian "maneating fish" felt like, I thought. I also felt sorry for the turtles in their big open pond, where they were probably touched inappropriately on a daily basis.
The hardest thing for me to get used to, though (and I kinda hope I don't), is probably the smoking in restaurants. I know it's still legal in a lot of the US, and DC bars only went smokefree a year ago, but man, it was a lot easier for this nonsmoker to accept the other way 'round. This is another reason I don't eat out more often; the kinds of places I could afford are almost guaranteed to have someone nearby lighting up. Most places don't designate smoking and non- sections, and those that do aren't particularly stringent (or smart) about it. You might think that China, or at least Beijing and Shanghai, would be looking at New York, London, and Paris for cues of which way the wind is blowing on this topic, but I'm pretty sure there isn't the least bit of debate about it here. And given the amount of tobacconists I pass on my way to class every day, it doesn't look like it's coming anytime soon.