"Asianisms"?

I have a ton of other things I would like to address on here, but I lack the time. This this will be quick enough, though, I think. I just need to understand it. Maybe writing it down will help. I need input from blogger world too. Set my mind at ease, please!

I wonder if anyone else has noticed, but some time in the past, I began to be aware that, every once in a while, when I'm trying to demonstrate sincerity in apologizing to or thanking somebody (the situations blurr in my head, it could be one or the other - or both), in this gesture of meekness, I will automatically put my hands together (like prayer hands, palms flat against each other, fingers extended - I don't know the proper verb for it!) and bow slightly, mostly with my head and sometimes my hands move along. Sometimes, it's just one nod, sometimes it's 2 or 3. Like the Japanese "Thank You" bow - quickie version (like the bows I get everyday for helping them take pictures or showing them where the "ata.. toi-root" is) - but with the hands.

[If there was someone looking in on me right now, they would think me a strange computer worshipper. Here I am, doing this over and over like an idiot, trying to recreate what I actually do so I can tell you about it.]

I always assumed that everyone did that, in the same way, perhaps, that Tongans assume that everyone knows they are saying "yes" when they raise an eyebrow or two at you. You don't do that do you?

In fact, I still am unsure of what to think because I haven't been paying close attention all this time. So my sudden intrigue at this simple gesture is not that I've been paying attention to it the whole time and finally come to a conclusion, or that I've really noticed a lack of it here.

Today, I helped a Chinese guest locate his tour guide. When thanking me, he did exactly what I just describe. I don't remember if it was a nod or two, but the hands definitely came together.

It grabbed my attention. And the whole reason for this blog is that I had always assumed that it was common place therefore never gave it much though, but today, today when I saw it, and something within me jolted in recognition, I realized how little I had seen it; how rare it was - at least in this world.

How common is this anyway? Where did I pick it up? It must have been something I learned from my environment. Do you do it too? Who have you noticed to have done it? I understand the bowing part, I think... but, why the hands? Does it have to do with joss-stick worship, maybe? I did, after all, grow up with many Buddhist Chinese. Maybe I'm just weird.

I wonder what gestures we do here, in this American world, that other cultures find strange or bizarre. We may not notice them until we travel to a foreign land when, suddenly, it visits us after a long absence, and we jolt at its familiarity.