Egalitarian social norms are part of what shapes culture and socio-economic behaviour in many countries. Two examples of such norms are the "Tall Poppy Syndrome" in Australia and a similar "Nail that Sticks Out" phenomenon in Japan, both referring to an apparent social animosity toward particularly successful individuals. We run a two-stage lab experiment separately at an Australian and a Japanese university to compare the strategies used by student participants in this context across both cultures. In the first stage participants solve a series of timed non-trivial cognitive tasks (the Knapsack problem) after which the best performer in a group of 5-7 gets a substantial bonus payoff. In the second stage participants are given an option to subtract from ("cut down a tall poppy" / "hammer down a nail that sticks out") or add to the payoffs of others, at a cost to their own. Our preliminary findings confirm the apparent animosity toward "tall poppies" / "sticking out nails" across both cultures, but we also find some significant differences. On average, participants in Australia take away from all other players in their group more than their counterparts in Japan. The opposite is true when giving points away: Japanese students tend to award extra payoff to others comparatively more than Australian students, particularly to the "middle earners". Overall, inequality within groups is reduced after the second stage in Japan but not in Australia.