Counting fingers

When you indicate the number 8 with your hands, how do you do it?
If you’re American you probably hold up your hands like this:
Side by side, in front of your face. The left hand indicates five and the right hand shows the remaining three.

But in Japan, it’s done like this:
With the hands held palms together. The hand behind shows five and the hand on top gives the rest.
I imagine that other places use this method as well, and it makes sense. The person looking at your hands only has to focus in one location and to check out the fingers on top to know the number. With the American method, I always end up scanning across the hands, taking in the face of the person holding them up, too. Not nearly so efficient.

A similar ease of use follows in the Japanese method for marking groups of 5. It uses the five strokes of the kanji for five. This is used all the time in restaurants:

At a glance, you can see the correct number. The American system of four vertical lines topped by a diagonal a slash across always forces me to double check wither it’s three or four lines marked down and so on, though I have no problem when it’s five or one. Maybe I’m just a little slow.