> Are you of Asian origin? There are a lot of Chinese, Koreans etc in my city and 8 is a big good luck number with them; the more 8s the luckier the number.
> Some suburbs have stopped having a house number 4 on a street, similar to that thing about not having a 13th floor in some places, because apparently 4 is the death number. I would have thought 8 would therefore be doubly unlucky, but apparently not.

Dunno about 8 or 4 within the Korean or Chinese culture, but I know the deal with the number 4 when it concerns the Japanese. "Shi" means death and also means "four" (which is why 4 is also said as "yon"). Additionaly, the number 7 can be pronounced "shichi" or "nana". From what I understand, it's not uncommon for something like a hospital to not have a fourth floor (though I have no first-hand experience). Just a consequence of having a language with way too many homonyms I suppose (seriously, in the back of my Kanji dictionary, there are roughly 80 different characters listed under "SHI").

Ste "Boku wa gaijin desu yo!" phen