It seems like regardless of the language, people play on words all over the world.
Of course, America is no exception. One of the jokes that includes word play is:
"A group of international students at a university in New York held a party in a house. In the kitchen, there were American people. In the living room, there were Asian people. What kind of people were in the bathroom? European."
I remember when I first heard this joke vividly, because this was one of the few jokes that I understood when I was an exchange student in Texas. The reason why I caught this joke unlike other jokes is probably that you do not need to have certain background information about American culture to understand this joke, but rather you simply have to know English well. The key to finding this joke funny basically comes down to whether you know a)bathroom is a euphemism for toilet, b)"euro" sounds like "uro," which is the combining form for urine, c)"pean" contains "pee" sound, which means, again, urine and finally d)toilet is related to urine.
Let's take a look at how word play is viewed in Japan.
I remember when I was little, I admired my father for his ability to come up with so many word plays. But from some point-- probably around when I was in the 4th grade-- I often ignored and laughed cruelly when he makes that kind of word play. As you might see in this example, word play is considered to be lower level humor except some cases. In fact, the word Japanese people often use to describe word play is dajare, whose first part da means lower-level, trivial and last part jare means humor or joke.
Although I know that my observation is not perfect, I would like to note that this is one of the big differences in American and Japanese attitudes toward this play on words. American people seem more tolerant towards word play in general.
