- Show them a trailer park: You want culture shock? This is how you do it.
- Use Yelp: Will help you find all the really interesting stuff, hopefully
- Go hiking: You can never go wrong with hiking
- Take them to your school: Probably totally different from their own – take them to math so they can laugh at your country's tiny brain.
- Take them to a baseball game: They have baseball in Japan, but from a cheering standpoint, a completely different experience.
- Take them to a football game: This is something you don't see much in Japan.
- Get them signed up for Facebook: Too many Japanese are still on Mixi. Turn your friend into a convert / traitor.
- Go to Costco: and enjoy the wholesale goodness!
- Take them to a mall: You can spend even more hours looking at all the stuff in all the stores.
- Show them your room: Make sure you hide the… yah know.
- Walk around downtown: Hopefully it won't come to something as boring as this, but downtowns can be a bit weird, right?
- Take them to a farmers market: Buy local fruits, food, and veggies!
- Go hunting for bugs: The Japanese and their relationships with bugs is something I'll never understand. Show them your bugs.
- Let them try a non-Japanese UFO catcher: These are the claw machines you find in some grocery stores and malls. Show them how our UFO catchers are actually impossible to win.
- Take them to an arcade: So they can get a good laugh.
- Eat a big steak: It's fun to hear Japanese people comment on how big the food is, and steak is a great way to do it.
- Eat a big hamburger (see if they try and use a knife and fork): Last time I did this, my guests had to eat with a fork and knife. I kept telling them it wasn't a fancy establishment, but they kept on going.
- Take them to the animal shelter and laugh because it's free! There are places full of cats that you have to pay to go in. Show them your local animal shelter.
- Teach them how to play a computer game: Computer games have never really caught on in Japan. Show them your favorite, and get them a copy of Starcraft!
- Buy a bunch of candy: Candy is completely different in America – nice and cheap shopping for the gifts they bring back to their friends.
- Buy a bunch of drinks: Same like candy, our drinks are probably a bit strange.
- Take them to a local tourist location: World's largest yarn ball? Sign me up!
- Have a family gathering: Get the family together and have a big dinner. Really fun for them to meet your crazy uncle Bob (be careful not to leave them alone though… you know how Uncle Bob gets).
- Make up a local holiday and celebrate it (but pretend it's real for them): If you don't want to make one up, celebrate a holiday someone else has made up. Take Festivus for example. Even if it's a total lie, it'll be a fun experience to take back!
- Go to a U-pick farm: Get back to your farmer roots!
- Teach them some pimpin' English slang: The Japanese love to learn English slang, just because their English education is so drab and boring (or maybe everyone likes learning slang?).
- Bring them to your Japanese class, so they can laugh: If you're taking Japanese at a school or something bring them along so they can help out, and have a good laugh while they are at it.
- Show them American homeless people: The homeless in Japan are totally different from what you see in America. Nobody sits and asks for money, and they have nice semi-permanent tarp shacks.
- Drive on the right side of the road: In Japan you drive on the left side – should be at least a tiny little thrill to do something so dangerous feeling, until it wears off.
- Buy a bunch of different cereal: You certainly don't see much cereal in Japan. Treat them to some CoCo Puffs!
- Get something really sweet for them to eat: Food in Japan doesn't get all that sweet. Normal-level sweet stuff in America is way too sweet for Japan. That's why you should get something that's considered too sweet for America.
- Take them to a vegan restaurant: You'll find some vegetarian stuff in Japan, but vegan is almost unheard of. Even if you're not vegan, try it out!
- Make a Bacon-Maple Donut: Enough said.
- Take them to your work / your parent's work: It's boring for you, but not for them! Make them do some work for you while you relax!
- Go to a 7/11 or another convenience store: I'd recommend 7/11 just because it's common both in America and in Japan. The food is completely different, and it's so much sketchier in America!
- Take them to the beach: I still don't get what's so special about the beach. Every Japanese book your read, everyone wishes they were at the beach, swimming around eating Takoyaki.
- Watch TV: I bet the commercials will be interesting.
- Take them to eat something that's really really bad for you (like Chicken and Waffles?): Donuts, maybe?
- Ask them what they want to see: Don't forget to see if there's anything they want to see.
- Hang out at a friend's house: Friends always bring another level of entertainment, not to mention their houses.
- Go on a day trip: Head off somewhere!
- Go to a thrift store like Goodwill / Value Village: Kind of dirty, kind of gross, but so much fun to see people's old stuff.
- Order pizza and get it delivered: I might be wrong on this, but if I'm not mistaken, delivery pizza is pretty hard to come by in Japan. What a novelty!
- Go on a scavenger hunt: Come up with a scavenger hunt and walk around finding things. Better yet, make it a photo scavenger hunt so you can do funny poses.
- Learn pig-latin: Then tell them it's how the upper class speaks.
- Leave them alone with your most ridiculous relative: Uncle Bob?
- Plan a trip to Japan to go visit them: Have them tell you where you should go and come up with plans to see each other again!
- Go to KFC: KFC is big in Japan, so you might as well try it out here and see if there's any difference.
- Take them to a basketball game: Same answer as Baseball.
- Go to Taco Bell: No tacos in Japan, especially fast food tacos.
- Go to McDonald's: I don't know why, but this is too much fun for them.
- Go to a terrible sushi place so they can tell you how good it is in Japan: Or, they'll just pretend it's tasty and you'll feel like a big jerk.
- Cook something together: A mini Thanksgiving dinner is what I recommend.
- Make a silly video: Then you'll remember this visit forever!
- Come up with a secret handshake: You can tell I'm reaching for straws here.
- Play a first-person shooter game: You don't see too many of these in Japan, so it could be fun to sit down and teach them how to play Halo.
- Show them anime that's in English: Dragonball with male voice-actors voicing over male characters? WhATT?
- Take them to a bookstore: They'll buy a book in English and tell you they'll use it to practice English, but probably won't.
- Take them to buy Levi Jeans, because they're so cheap! It's up to you to decide whether or not you want to tell them the quality is worse.
- Find a local fair or event: So many matsuri's go on in Japan, see if you can find one in your area.
- Take them to a carnival: Carnivals are so weird. Why wouldn't you take them here?
- Go to a store full of weird things like Urban Outfitters or Spencer's: More fun omiyage.
- Take them to a gun range / place that sells guns: No guns in Japan, so let them go all out and shoot so they can tell all their friends.
- Test drive a really big car: Hummmmer!
- Help them buy music off of your local iTunes (and burn it to CDs if they need it): Music in Japan is ridiculously expensive. Help them buy a bunch of music while they're not in Japan and take it back with them.
- Go camping (real camping): When a Japanese person says "camping," they often mean getting a hotel room out in a rural area. Show them what real camping means.
- Go fishing: And then make some sashimi out of it!
- Teach them about sarcasm: Unfortunately, the Japanese don't get sarcasm very well. But, you could help, right?
- Taste the tap water: Does it taste okay, or did you both get sick?
- Go to a Subway and order a sandwich: mmmm
- Make a Maple Bacon Donut: All you need are maple donuts, and then fry some bacon to put on top. Yummy!
- Go to an outlet mall: Japanese love shopping, especially when it's so unbelievably cheap!
- Go mushroom hunting: Make sure you know what you're doing, though. Find some Matsutake mushrooms and they'll be so happy that it doesn't cost $300 /lb.
- Walk around a forest, eat some berries: Once again, make sure you know what you're eating.
- Make and fly a kite! No explanation needed
- Play Time Crisis 3 in your local mall: This way, they can feel nostalgic, since it's not Time Crisis 54.
- Teach them about Macs, and how they're so much better: I just added this one so I can know how many people made it this far down the list. Macs vs. PC posts always get lots of comments, hardee har.
- Go ride a horse: Don't forget to dress up like cowboys / cowgirls, yeehaw!
- Play Miniature Golf: Or, if you're like me and my friends, play Miniature hockey golf.
- Find some really big dogs: All the dogs in Japan are soooo tiny.
- Go get some ice-cream: The more ridiculous the place, the better.
- Go to an "Asian Market": Then you can show them where you get your Gumi from.
- Teach them about Torrenting: To download Linux builds, of course… sheesh!
- Go to WalMart: Tell them how evil this corporation is while you're walking around with an armful of cheap stuff.
- Visit a mountain: Pretty typical tourist stuff, right there.
- Teach them about Left4Dead: Because zombie teamwork is great.
- Introduce them to 30Rock: And tell them they should learn all their English from this television show. Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a decent alternative, though.
- Visit an Alpaca / Llama farm: They're so cute, those furry camels!
- Go bowling with friends: And while you're at it, teach them about "The Big Lebowski."
- Go eat Chinese: Real Chinese, not the Panda Express kind. Dim Sum if possible.
- Go walk / drive around some really big, expensive houses: If they thought big Japanese houses were big, time to think again.
- Take them to a big department store (like Target): You can spend hours looking at all the different products.
- Go stargazing: Does it look different from here? Would anyone notice?
- Go to an old car show: so they can see what existed before Toyota and Honda took over the entire car market.
- Make S'Mores: because they make you want to say, "I want S'more!" (too lame?)
- Get on a boat: and get out on some water.
- Go to Pizza Hut: Where are the octopus / potato pizzas?
- Take them to a big Catholic church: Attend mass, too. It's super interesting and different – probably more so for them than for you, but you never know.
- Exchange bad words: They give you bad words in Japanese, you give them bad words in English. Straight trade. Everyone loves learning bad words in the language they are learning, right?
- Come up with your own stuff: and share them with us on Twitter! P.S. Great quote from Brandon at Zen Everyday: "You listed Make a Maple Bacon Donut twice. At first I thought it was a mistake, but then realized, that 2 maple bacon donuts could never be a mistake."
Made me laugh.