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Another fascinating thing from USA is their tipping. They often give tips if they eat in a restaurant. It says that they must tip in between 15% - 20% of their total meal price or a flat amount of the appropriate percent. It is not mandatory in most of the states, it is now just a culture which widespread all across the United States, especially at sit-down restaurants which offer table service. The tip is for the waiters and waitresses because their wage is so low, even sometimes below the Federal Minimum Wage.

There are several ways to tip. In sit-down restaurants, customers will put the tip at the bill tray which the waiter brought to the table. In a coffee shops, bakeries or café, they have a tip jars on their check-out counters and we can put the tip there. Sometimes people don’t put money too. And in fast food restaurants, they don’t have tipping as there is no ‘table service.’

What makes it nice is that the Americans are not complaining about this. They gave tips without any hard feelings. It may be a burden for new people, especially for tourists. When they are not used to it and they were “forced” to give tips, they will feel uneasy. But people can give only a small amount of tip if they think the service is bad or the food is not that delicious. It all still depends on the customers.

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This is the thing that I find interesting about USA. They have refill soda in every fast food restaurant! Isn’t that amazing? You pay once and you can get like 10 cups of soda, and it varied. You can have a cup of Coke at first, and then you take a cup of Sprite next, Fanta next, etc. That is so amazing! But how can the fast food restaurants maintain it? Don’t they lose money because of that?

Moreover, the size of the cups are huge. Even the kids’ size cups are almost the same size as the medium size cups in Japan. Isn’t that crazy? Why do you have to give huge cups when you can refill the cups? But still I think it is amazing to have a free-flow soda. You can just be full because of the soda itself.

In contrast, I think this is one of the cause of the high percentage of obesity in the USA. Approximately 35.7% of adults in the USA are considered as obese. In my opinion, soda takes a big part in this, because of the sugar in it. What makes it worse, the soda in the USA is free-flow, so you can imagine how much soda the American consumes.

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Once a year, in NBA, they hold an event called All-Star Weekend. At that time of the year, they have various events, such as the skill challenge, west vs east all-star where the fans got the chance to pick 10 best players from both western and eastern conference, rookie vs sophomore all-star, 3-point contest, and what I think is the most interesting, is the Slam Dunk contest.

Slam Dunk contest is a contest where 4 contestants try to give their best dunks. It consists of 2 stages, the preliminary and the final round. The contestants can show 3 dunks in the preliminary stage and 2 dunks in the championship round. Only 2 players can proceed to the championship round. The scoring system is by 5 judges and each judges can give a score from the scale of 1-10.

This contest is awesome because the contestants should be creative. They will only get low scores if they give a simple dunk. The creativity and the complexity of the dunk will be the key factor for them to win the contest.

In the Slam Dunk contest 2016, the championship round was amazing and it was so tight. The battle between Zach LaVine of Minnesota Timberwolves and Aaron Gordon of Orlando Magic got the attention of everyone and it was considered as one of the best Slam Dunk contest ever.

Watch the video below to see all the dunks from Aaron Gordon and Zach Lavine in 2016 Dunk Contest.

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Zach LaVine and Aaron Gordons AWESOME 2016 Slam Dunk Duel

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Take a look back at one of the best dunk contests in the history of All-Star Weekend between Zach LaVine and Aaron Gordon! About the NBA: The NBA is the premier professional basketball league in the United States and Canada.

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One of the most fascinating thing about the USA is their basketball. They have the best basketball league in the world, NBA as they call it. It began back then in 1946, when they created the basketball association and name it BAA at first. The name NBA was introduced in the 1948-49 season, when they added 6 teams into the league.

Nowadays, NBA is the most famous basketball league in the whole world. Every basketball fans watch it. Their favorite player must be an NBA player, whether they are still playing or retired already.

What makes the NBA always interesting to watch and never run out of talent? Besides of taking talents from abroad, they keep regenerating new players every season in an event that they call as NBA Draft. Each team will select a basketball player from college and give contract to them and sign them as a rookie. And another thing, Americans who want to join the NBA practice real hard since they were a kid, that’s why they are really good.

If you watch an NBA game, you will see a whole different level of basketball. Their movement is really good, both their offense and defense are well organized, and they are also really entertaining, especially with their skills. I can imagine why the USA national basketball team is always winning in the basketball World Cup or even Olympics.