“Kokuhaku” is Japanese culture?

Kokuhaku means when we wanna be a couple, either a man or woman ask “Will you be my boyfriend/girlfriend?”. It’s “Kokuhaku”. Japanese always ask directly "wanna be a couple?". I heard foreigner doesn’t say it. So it’s not clear when the relationship starts. I often heard people realize having relationship when boyfriend introduces girlfriend to friends and parents, I realized “Kokuhaku” is only Japanese culture through communication with foreigners.

As for me, I and my boyfriend told “I like you” to each other after one week, my boyfriend asked me,”How should I call you? Here, we call each other baby or babe.” And I realized we are couple lol. We　decided our couple birthday's day in a hurry. 

By the way, in Japan, when we say “date”, it's usually for couple. It’s like going to a movie and eating out with boyfriend and girlfriend. But here, they say date before becoming couple. In Japan, we don’t even know each other, we just become couple and think later if we are good or not. But here, people are dating many times. So I think it would not break up easily.

Introducing boyfriend and girlfriend to friends and parents, it’s called “ Official”. It’s a little complicated for Japanese. Also about how to call each other, before, my Taiwanese friend told me, “Japanese people call by each name in couple right? Feel little weird.” It’s also Japanese culture. 

Before I thought that is normal, but through communication with foreigners, I realized we have a lot of different culture behaviors with other countries.