The cultures of the East and the West really distinguish each other a lot. This is because the culture systems are two separate systems on the whole.
The origin of the eastern cultures is mainly from two countries: China and India. Both of the two cultures are gestated by rivers. In China, the mother river is the Yellow River while the Indian one is the Hindu River. These two cultures were developed for several thousand years and formed their own styles. Then in Ｔang Dynasty of China, the Chinese culture gradually went overseas to Japan, mixed into the Japanese society and shaped the Japanese culture nowadays. Though a bit different from the Chinese one, it belongs to the same system.
When the two mother rivers gave birth to the eastern culture, another famous culture was brought up on the Mesopotamian Plain ---- the Mesopotamian Civilization. This civilization later on developed into the cultures of the Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. And these two are well-known as the base of the European culture. Like the Chinese culture, the European one also crossed waters. When the colonists of England settled down in America, their culture went with them over the Atlantic Ocean. So the American culture doesn't distinguish from the European one a lot.
At the same time, the difference of the language systems adds to the cultural differences. In the East, most languages belong to the pictographic language (see the picture below) while the Western languages are mostly based on the Latin system, for example, the one I’m using to write this paper.
Other factors like human race difference counts as well. But what’s more, due to the far distance and the steep areas between the East and West, the two cultures seldom communicate until recent centuries. So they grew up totally in their own ways with almost no interference from the other
