Japanese Life Rules That Might Seem Foreign To Visitors

Number Four Is Considered Unlucky

In Asia, there are a lot of superstitions about luck and numbers. There are a lot of them in the West too (we're looking at you, number 13). It's not surprising that Japanese culture has its own unlucky number: four. People will go out of their way to avoid the number four because it sounds a lot like the Japanese word for death.

For instance, tourists might see that their hotel's elevator doesn't have a button for the fourth floor. There might not be any floors between the 40th and 49th if the building has more than 40 levels.