What is American culture?

I've been busy preparing lesson plans for a few groups of students who will be studying abroad in the United States and Canada.  It's more difficult than I had imagined.  We (my co-worker and I) will be teaching the students 'Airport English' (i.e. how to get through customs), how to introduce themselves with a little more fluidity than taught in the average Japanese high school (Hello. How are you? I'm fine.), and how to interact with a host family.  I asked another co-worker, a Japan native who studied abroad in Australia, what information she might have wished she had when she first went abroad.  The first thing she said was, 'How to explain Japanese culture.'

Funny, isn't it? 

I'm biased and naïve, but I think Americans have a particularly difficult situation.  At least that's what I felt the first few weeks in the chat lounge after trying to answer an American culture-related question.  The United States is a relatively new country; only about 300 years old.  It's made up of a conglomeration of cultures and traditions and is consistently morphing into something new.  In contrast, Japan is a nearly homogeneous nation (over 90% Japanese) that is well over 2,000 years old.  I could probably give a more thorough overview of Japanese culture than American right now if I was asked, and that's precisely because we're never asked to explain our culture when we're living it every day.

When immigrants arrive in the United States, whether it be Hmong in the 80s and 90s, the Irish and German in the 1700s, or the Latinos today, people come to the United States with the idea that things will be better in the U.S.  I'm currently reading a book about a displaced Hmong family that fled from the war from Laos to Thailand, and when the refugee camp closed down in Thailand, to St. Paul, Minnesota.  They came to Minnesota to begin a life filled with hope.  Parents wanted their children to assimilate and get an education to have a better future than they did; it was difficult to maintain Hmong traditions while working graveyard shifts and taking care of children.  They assimilate, but to what?

My great-grandmother and family on a farm in Iowa

I've been asked to explain American culture before.  Usually it comes down to being loud in public and not being afraid to hug someone.  The geographical scale of the U.S. creates more issues. I'm often asked what people are like in the United States, and I start talking about 'Minnesota Nice.'  The entire land mass of Japan can fit into the state of Montana, so maybe it's better to think locally. 

I've heard about the 'melting pot' theory.  It sounds nice, but doesn't sound so believable when broken down: people come from all corners of the earth to the U.S., leave their traditions and heritage behind, and melt into one big, steaming pot of American-nes.  I wonder what kind of melty blob we create...?  A college professor opened me up to the 'salad bowl' metaphor; I'm a tomato, you're lettuce, we're individuals but we complement one another.  I prefer this allegory as it acknowledges that we may all be living in the same serving container, and we may all be covered with the same salad dressing (take that as you will), but we still have individual mannerisms, beliefs, and traditions.  Sure, there are probably quite a few generalizations to make about American culture.  We favor individualism, low power distance relationships, straight-forwardness, and the avoidance of personal questions (don't you DARE ask me how old I am).  Beyond that, we're just a cucumber here, an onion there.