Teaching communicative competence is extremely important in language instruction. While politeness discourse varies in complexity according to social distance, relative power between the speakers, and situations, Swedish learners of Japanese often do not see the necessity of learning the polite/honorific discourse and often view these negatively as Swedish society is one of the most egalitarian in the world. However, it is important to point out to foreign language learners that cultural/social norms are not modifiable based on one’s opinion and that one must adapt to the language one is using and the culture one is in. The current study investigates the differences in politeness strategies between Swedish and Japanese discourse. Student surveys and analysis of students’ errors have revealed clear differences in the use of politeness strategies. While politeness, respect, and formality are closely intertwined in Japanese; the Swedes perceive respect and politeness as separate matters. It is also found that while the Japanese are inclined to use verbal politeness strategies, the Swedes express their respect more through non-verbal actions/behaviors. Various Japanese and Swedish utterances have also been examined to determine the DP default (Usami 2006) in order to systematize the politeness strategies in ways similar to grammatical rules.