Yeah, definitely not the "straight in" one...
Interesting. Some of these are big deals (particularly the ones mentioned as important) but others I have seen Japanese people in Tokyo do quite consistently. Soroebashi - not on the table, but I've seen chopsticks aligned by pushing them against the plate hundreds of time. I've also seen them used to stir miso soup, etc. plenty.
Others I don't know that I would have much of an inclination to do and haven't seen but am not sure if it's because it really is a faux pas or just because no one else really tends to do it either.
I think if you were to do an Osaka version of this, the list would be limited to maybe 4 of these (licking, chopsticks upright in rice, passing between chopsticks, and pointing esp. toward a senior would be taboo).
Whereas when I had a date with a girl from Kyoto, one of the first things that happened when we went to eat was she had to stop me from picking up my chopsticks impolitely and show me the proper way of doing it.
Suffice it to say my Osaka-learned table manners and speech patterns meant there was no second date.
I would say you dodged a bullet.
I dated many foreign girls and it was always fun to discover the cultural differences.
There are similar faux-pas in France but, really, nobody with an ounce of common sense cares. You like your red wine cold as I do? Someone will maybe mention that you will be loosing some aroma znd that's all. You add sugar and ice? This is probably not a drink for you and you will get some laughs but that's all.
I eat my starters after the main meal in the company restaurant, nobody cares.
You are there to have pleasure, this is not West Point
I'm not sure I'd put it down entirely to Osaka versus Kyoto. My impression is that these things often have at least as much to do with upbringing, formality, and social background as with region.
I don't know where you're from, so apologies if this is an unfair assumption, but in countries like the US or Australia people often seem less attuned to social class, whereas in places like the UK, France, and indeed Japan, those distinctions can carry more weight, even if they almost always go unspoken.
Agreed. Was always taught to never put elbows on the table, but as an adult I see people do it everywhere.
Seeing people fail to meet a standard does not mean that the standard does not exist.
I think the deeper question is whose standards and why should we consider them the standard?
Some of them of course are invented whole cloth. British Received Pronunciation was invented and needs to be learned and is the standard of the upper class. It's neither right nor wrong but it's there to differentiate.
You say “needs to be learned” but that’s no more so than any other accent.
We just grow up with it because it’s how our parents and the parents of our friends speak.
If you want to change your accent you can, of course, get elocution lessons but most Brits do not. We just have a large variety of accents of which RP is one.
"Received Pronunciation was invented"
How so?
That's the thing with standards: there are so many of them to choose from.
You don't have to follow them, but you do you should be ready to accept the consequences of your choice.
When it comes to manners, I'd say seeing enough people fail to meet a standard means it's not a standard, at least.
No, that's argumentum ad populum.
Mind you, I'm not saying that standards must be followed. I am just saying the same thing I tell my kids:
- the standards are there, wishing they didn't exist doesn't invalidate them
- the reason rules and standards came to existence might or might not be applicable to our current context, but some people will expect you to follow them regardless.
- If a rule or standard seems silly to you, make your best attempt at understanding why people would still follow it. (Chesterton's fence)
- You are free to not comply to some rules, but always be ready to accept the consequences of your decisions.
- What your friends are doing or not doing is not reason enough for you to change your behavior or choices.
> the standards are there, wishing they didn't exist doesn't invalidate them
But not observing them does. There are standards no one in the world follows anymore. They may still “be there”, but are only used for mocking purposes.
> If a rule or standard seems silly to you, make your best attempt at understanding why people would still follow it. (Chesterton's fence)
The corollary to that is that anyone who rebukes anyone else for not following a standard must be able to explain why it exists. “Because it’s rude” it’s not good enough, explain why it’s considered rude.
But the populus sets the standards. If people decide not to follow a particular one anymore, it stops being the standard.
You and I are using different meanings for standard.
then it’s a custom or etiquette, not a standard
> the standards are there, wishing they didn't exist doesn't invalidate them
If people act like a standard doesn't exist, then the standard actually doesn't exist, because that's the only thing that defines a standard.
Most people in the US use imperial unit, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Standards are not absolutes.
Yeah, as if we still have loose table tops, like in medieval times.
Could be the Japanese version of getting a friend to "save them from the date" by calling to pretend it is an emergency.
I wonder what Ms. Kyoto would tell me to do to properly pick up my chopsticks, given that I’m left-handed, and yet it is apparently a faux pas to lay down the chopsticks pointing to the right.
I’m thinking this would be interesting inspiration for a song by the band Pulp.
Jarvis Cocker-san.
I live in Osaka (only lived here a year) and it is fascinating the vibe change between Osaka and Kyoto.
It's always wild to me when I hear about how different the culture is between Osaka and Kyoto when they're so close.
I remember being blown away when I was in a Kyoto Familymart after a few months of living in Osaka after they handed me my fried chicken very delicately with both hands like it was a business card!
I guess that’s the cultural divide that occurs when one community is fishing and trading while the other does, like, competitive perfumed calligraphy or whatever.
Clearly they also cook and serve fried chicken.
competitive perfumed calligraphic etiquette -- of your grandfathers!
Similar in Spain between Andalusia doing trades since forever across the whole Mediterranean Sea vs the inner provinces (the Castille-s) and the chilly Atlantic North regions with Celtic/Basque substrates.
Do you know how serious "chopsticks upright in rice" is? I had a Chinese teacher who mentioned the taboo (with regard to China, not Japan), but she also said that while people recognize that it's something you're not supposed to do, it's not taken seriously either.
There's equally complex dining and utensils etiquette in Western culture but it's largely omitted (or even unknown) on daily basis.
I use to have a routine with a friend where we paid close attention to the table manners of his wealthy upper class relatives. Then when they did something wrong we would point it out loudly as if it was the end of the world. Best was 3+ mistakes in a row. Bonus points if you can point out the mistake and add something like we are not in Belgium!
There is a wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_utensil_etiquette
Edit: The wiki on chopsticks has an etiquette section broken down by country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopsticks#Chopstick_customs,_...
Fascinating. The difference of the American style where you switch the fork between the left and right hands reminded me of a similar difference in fishing gear - where Americans (to my understanding) mostly cast with their right hand and then switch the rod to their left hand when retrieving, while in Europe (or at least in Italy) you usually just keep the rod in the right hand instead of switching.
The difference between the American and European styles has been used as plot point in fictional works, including the 1946 film O.S.S. and the 2014 series Turn: Washington's Spies.[5] In both works, using the wrong fork etiquette threatens to expose undercover agents.
I’m not even sure what the technical etiquite is. As a right handed American it just seems more natural to have my knife in my right hand but if I’m just using a fork I tend to switch that to my right hand. Didn’t even think about it until right now.
American zigzagging utensil acrobatics always seemed like a lot of nonsense to me. It looks bad and fiddly.
You may "enjoy" this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1VRIEg2Xsw
Tarantino has a bit about it in inglorious bastards.
Yes! Hardly anyone knows it all, and even people who know the basics adjust their behavior based on the situation. Eating out with your high school buddies requires a different level of observance than the dinner at which your girlfriend is introducing you to her parents.
That's not really a coherent statement.
If people don't even know it, it's not part of the culture.
Who are the “people” that you are referring to?
This makes total sense to me. There is no monolithic “culture”— there are multiple related cultures, differing little in essence but differing greatly in the details. And each individual is usually only partially ignorant anyway.
Culture changes, too, and asymmetrically. So the “done thing” may be done be very few anymore.
I guess I was talking about the people that don't know about the culture you guys say they are part of.
For some reason, you're reading things into the original statement that are not there. "An etiquette exists in a culture" does not mean everyone has to follow or even be aware of it.
I feel like there was a brief period when middle class came to existence and started mimicking customs of the upper class, which were very complicated because the upper class was mostly bored and had invented this shit to kill the time. Then two things happened:
1. Upper class stopped being formal because formality stopped being a signal of upper class.
2. Middle class stopped having social gatherings in general.
So, like, "it is a part of the culture" in the same sense as traditional outfits are a part of the culture - most people have very vague awareness, nobody really cares.
> invented this shit to kill the time
This is unnecessarily flippant, trivializing, and reductive.
The upper classes had the time and position to refine manners. I think one mistake people make is to think manners are arbitrary nonsense. But manners, when fitting, honor the self and others with conduct that suits the dignity of the human person and functions as a sign of that dignity. You cannot tell me that a man hunched over a table cramming food down his throat gaping at a television is no different than one who eats according to the above custom of etiquette.
I’m not one for stiff artifice especially when slavishly applied, but I don’t think manners as such are arbitrary. That nobody cares would explain why so many people look like slobs and behave like boors.
If we begin with human nature and then view the virtues as perfections that actualize the fullness of that nature, then it becomes clearer that some behavior is more fitting and honored better by certain practices.
Is is also topic od relevance.
Poland has honorifics that are probably on par to those in Japan, but since the language is difficult to learn and frankly speaking nobody cares about Poland, barely anyone even knows this.
Also lots of corporations prefer "american style" approach of just refering by name (even to the CEO), so this dissapears.
Probably could write few pages about this, but nobody would care to read.
While historically Polish honorifics are one of the most elaborate in Europe because of its noble culture, I wouldn’t say they are as elaborate as the Japanese, at least not in the same manner.
I'm interested in learning more about this! As a Finn I love Poland and have been there multiple times (most recently just two weeks ago). I don't know the language, but details like honorifics reveal interesting tidbits of the culture and society. I guess I should prompt an LLM about it.
>> Poland has honorifics that are probably on par to those in Japan
> I'm interested in learning more about this!
It's very simple, actually.
For strangers, you use the third person and the title « Pan » or « Pani » (Sir or Lady). You avoid pronouns, « The Lady has forgotten the Lady's purse on the table ».
For friends, you use the t-form ("ty", thou), and use a diminutive rather than the full name. « Johny, you've forgotten your bag on the table ».
For work colleagues, you traditionally use « Pan » or « Pani » with the full form of the first name. « Mister John, the mister's bag is on the table ». This is perceived as old-fashioned, and is increasingly being replaced by the t-form.
The v-form has fallen into disuse, as it was promoted by the Communist regime.
(The old-fashioned honorifics still exist, but they are only used in administrative correspondence: the only time when you're "the respectable gentleman" is when you need to pay taxes.)
I wonder what will become of our honorifics in upcoming decades. Our language changes so much under influence of English, imported sociopolitical trends that surely made some of our bards spin in their graves.
On a side note, I find interesting is that Czech language still naturally uses that plural form we abandon due to popularity of pan/pani forms.
I’m Japanese, but honestly, I don’t pay much attention to it. My parents used to get on me about it when I was a kid, but I still do it sometimes.
Half of this list feels about as important as remembering the order of spoons on a table. Something that probably meant a lot 100 years ago but is mostly forgotten now.
I've seen those too. I was going to say that I've seen people put the bowl to their mouth and shovel food in with chopsticks, but now that I come to think about it that might well actually be from the series Tokyo Diner and Takeshi Kitano films, and may be deliberately uncouth characterisations...
Bringing the bowl close to your mouth and picking food up from it is proper. Pushing it from the bowl into your mouth is impolite but common.
So what are you expected to do with the last few sauce-soaked grains of rice that would at best be able to be plucked grain by grain from the bowl, and even then would likely slip from between the tips of the chopsticks? Just leave them in the bowl?
I vaguely remember something about not finishing completely to acknowledge there was enough
I'm under the impression this is a Chinese vs. Japanese difference. Shoveling food into your mouth is perfectly acceptable in Chinese etiquette but discouraged in Japanese. Accordingly the Japanese cook their rice to clump together so it's easier to pick up using your chopsticks so that you don't have to resort to shoveling.
Both do, but the moment any sauce gets on the rice it's impossible to pick up with chopsticks.
A lot of culture was lost in the Cultural Revolution
I thought it was okay to shovel noodles, but have not heard it was okay for rice.
I haven't been specifically informed as to either question, but I find that idea surprising, since noodles are infinitely easier to pick up with chopsticks than rice is.
it's like western etiquette: upper class, fine dining traditional practices are not what you'll see everyday even among polite society. the spectrum of behaviors will also depend on one's company.
I assume this must be the case here because I'm familiar with a lot of different etiquette contexts in the US and I have the impression that Japan has far more of that sort of thing than we do. Off the top of my head there are (at minimum) the way we were expected to eat in front of my grandparents, a more "regular" dinner with the extended family, a small gathering at a tex mex joint or chain restaurant or whatever, a fast food joint, and whatever slovenly things I do while sitting on my couch in private.
Anyone from a particularly wealthy family can probably add an additional couple contexts on the high end. Every single one of those situations has slightly different "rules" for what's acceptable.
And then there’s my favorite, the southern seafood boil etiquette.
We have a lot of dining etiquette too if you look into it. But it’s mostly forgotten and irrelevant high class behavior.
Yep. Two words:
_grape scissors_
Look here, Bridgerton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNegQyn-4N8
You also see plenty of americans put their elbows on the table.
The original reasons for not putting your elbows on the table (limited space, as well as some others) just don't apply anymore. There's no reason _not_ to put your elbows on the table other than "that's how it's always been done". As such, at least in my opinion, the rule no longer applies.
sailors eat with their elbows on the table, to keep their fare from sliding as the boat rocks. don't look poor!
Yeah? How are you supposed to line up the sticks? And stir the soup? I think the "Mawashibashi" faux pas is to whip the soup like a madman, or to aimlessly swish it, and the translated listicle doesn't convey that.
You could surreptitiously agitate the soup as you pull out the solid contents.
Line them up by using your hands. It’s simple…
If you must mix soup, there is a spoon, or you simply bring it to your lips and it will mix as you tilt and sip from it.
My heart is lightened to learn inserting the chopsticks into your mouth to make walrus fangs is not taboo.
Don’t go to Chinese food with a drummer. It’s just maddening.
It actually is tradition
I'm betting Kuwaebashi covers that.
When I first moved to Taiwan and was just getting a handle on Chinese, I asked a waiter "請給我一個筷子" - not yet being familiar with proper measure words.
The waiter (who had a bit of a sense of humor) brought me exactly ONE chopstick. I laughed and repeated 請給我另一個筷子 (Please give me another chopstick) and he brought out another one.
Of course later my friend told me that I should have used 雙 to indicate I wanted a "pair" of chopsticks.
> Of course later my friend told me that I should have used 雙 to indicate I wanted a "pair" of chopsticks.
That's hard to guess. There are three common measure words meaning "pair"; 副 is for "pairs" that are connected, like a "pair" of scissors in English, but 双 and 对 are basically identical in significance as far as I know.
> The waiter (who had a bit of a sense of humor) brought me exactly ONE chopstick.
Slightly unfair, since 一个筷子, beyond being semantically anomalous, is more or less ungrammatical too. If you actually wanted one chopstick, you'd say 一只筷子.
What kind of path did you take that taught you how to say 另一个 before you learned about measure words?
Phew, I'm glad "inserting them into your nostrils and braying like a walrus" isn't on the list.
waruburashi
odobashi?
SNORT
Don't, you'll get chopsticks in your sinuses
I think it's number 9 in the list
sacrilegious lol
This would make a great poster to give to our local sushi bar chef/friend.
edit: Gemini makes great infographics https://imgur.com/a/V2D9VlM
Hashibashi - does this mean it's okay to place the chopsticks across the top if it's not to show you're finished? I heard that was okay as long as you align them not to point at another person (not across the table). If there's no chopstick rest I'm not sure where else you're supposed to put your chopsticks.
Also I'm not sure how you're supposed to eat e.g. fried rice without yokobashi or kakibashi.
Also! I thought kaeshibashi was a good thing. I've definitely seen people do that at parties.
The article does a good job calling out the more serious offenses, although I’d personally argue that nigiribashi is just as bad as the other two. Most Japanese people would probably react with a bit of shock to those.
That said, chopstick etiquette is definitely evolving. Something like chobujubashi isn’t enforced as strictly anymore, especially with more awareness around left-handed users. Kaeshibashi, on the other hand, is becoming more common, and in some social circles, not doing it can actually come across as rude.
> Kaeshibashi, on the other hand, is becoming more common, and in some social circles, not doing it can actually come across as rude.
I was always under the impression this was the polite thing to do.
Couple of funeral related ones, couple of odd customs, and the rest are "imagine what an overbearing parent would say to their 6 yo using chopsticks"
For anyone else curious after reading "-bashi" 40 times:
(Not gonna direct quote because the damn site doesn't allow copy-pasting so they don't get a link, paraphrased):
Kirai-bashi would be literally translated to "dislike-chopsticks" and means bad chopstick table-manners. Hashi is chopsticks and bashi is the voiced form of it.
So the bashi suffix/word on the end of all of these just means chopsticks it seems.
To add to this, voicing is also a way for Japanese words to become more “coherent”, the same way you write “dislike-chopsticks” as one combined noun, and not “dislike chopsticks”.
Someone downvoted this, but the poster is correct, so there was absolutely no reason for downvoting.
Rendaku, i.e. the voicing of the initial consonant, happens in the native Japanese words (i.e. not in the Japanese words of Chinese origin), in most cases when they are a part of a compound word and they are not the initial word. This serves indeed to distinguish a sequence of unrelated words from a compound word.
There are exceptions when rendaku does not happen, but typically whenever a word like hashi becomes a part of a compound word it will be voiced to -bashi.
"H" is a special case among the consonants, because in old Japanese it was pronounced as "p", which is why it is voiced as "b". Later, in initial positions the pronunciation was changed to "f" and even later the pronunciation was changed to "h". The "f" pronunciation has been retained only before "u", like in Fuji. In non initial positions, the original "p" has become later "v" and even later "w".
These pronunciation changes happened after the creation of the hiragana and katakana syllabaries, so they were not reflected in writing. The orthographic reform that was forced after WWII has brought the written form of the words closer to the pronunciation, e.g. by writing consistently "w" where it is pronounced so. Before WWII, many words written now with "-wa-" were still written with "-ha-", a spelling that has been preserved now only in the particle "wa" (like the spelling corresponding to the old pronunciation "wo" has been preserved for the particle "o").
While the Japanese orthographic reform had some positive effects, in simplifying a little the Japanese writing, it also had the effect that for someone who knows only the modern written Japanese it is difficult to read the Japanese books published before WWII, where many different kanji are used and also their hiragana transcriptions are different.
I assume that this was actually an effect intended by the American occupation forces, as a similar policy was applied by the Russians in all the territories of the Soviet Union (except the Baltic countries), where they forced the native populations to change their writing systems to the Cyrillic alphabet, in order to make difficult for the younger generations to read anything dating from before the Russian occupation.
Would it not have been easier to just write down what is actually "allowed" :D
I was shocked to find it's a faux pas to rub disposable chopsticks to remove potential splinters. I was taught this is what you're supposed to do with disposable chopsticks.
It's rude if it's a nice establishment, as it conveys your belief that the chopsticks are of low quality. So that's what you're signaling with that. If everyone already knows they are cheap (e.g. disposable), then have at it.
If a nice establishment has splintery chopsticks maybe they should look in the mirror.
I go to your house to have food. You give me a fork and knife. I go to your kitchen to wash the fork and knife for good measure.
Probably it's rude to do it automatically with every pair of disposable chopsticks and not just the crappy ones.
I once witnessed a local admonish another (younger) local for exactly that at a bar. He replied with a bratty "Not my fault they're using crappy chopsticks..."
I ate at a very nice restaurant (think The Menu) in Kagaonsen last week and the main course was served with lacquered chopsticks but another course was served with disposable chopsticks and the waiter actually broke them and rubbed them together for me. I think the social faux pas is making a show of doing it.
You know you're at a fancy restaurant when the waiters have an entire dish emulating what the poors are eating. Reminds me of a restaurant I used to really like in NYC called 'Peasant' :-/
Perhaps they did that because they knew some people would be too polite to?
I agree. I always have to do it, except at the rare restaurants. Not just splinters, but rough edges too.
right? What's the right way? I don't want splinters on the most sensitive surface in my body..
The splinters come from where they break apart and there's not really any reason to have that part of the chopsticks touching your skin.
But you move away from break apart disposable chopsticks in Japan long before you get to high etiquette dining. In my experience, basically every restaurant in Japan that isn't of, like, fast food tier, provides actual chopsticks instead of disposable ones.
I had mostly disposables but they were actually lathed wood. The crude rectangular cut chopsticks are terrible -- usually not for splinters, but they often break imperfectly, leaving you with two sticks with different lengths.
For those cheap chopsticks, I've found the best way to break them is to grasp them at the very tips, then move your two hands away from each other briskly without twisting, just straight apart. I haven't had many break badly since I started doing this.
> Kuwaebashi - To take the tips of the chopsticks in one’s mouth.
Does it mean without food?
> こじ箸 Kojibashi (also known as ほじり箸 hojiribashi)
> To use the chopsticks to pick something out from near the bottom of the dish.
I think there must be some bits that are lost in translation for some of these. This makes it sound like you can't eat all of the food in a bowl with your chopsticks.
Maybe it means that you're digging up food that is under other food?
Yeah, could be - that's kind of what I mean in terms of being lost in translation. It feels like there's missing information / context in quite a few of them.
Edit: In fact I think you're completely right - "picking out" something near the bottom of the dish does suggest that.
Let me check but I think it refers to a shared dish; at an izakaiya you often order a bunch of shared food plates and then serve yourself from them.
It is definitely rude to use chopsticks that you just put in your mouth to go rooting around for something in those. You are supposed to take from the top and ideally turn them around using the back end. Some people frown on using the back ends however as it may have been touched by your hand...
Edit add: It means to dig food out, either from your own dish or a shared one. Like mixing the food up to look for something you like in it.
返し箸 Kaeshibashi (also known as 逆さ箸 sakasabashi)
To turn the chopsticks around when serving food so that the tips of the chopsticks that have touched one’s mouth do not touch the food.
I think just written in an ambiguous way: "dish" here refers to the food contained in the vessel and not the vessel itself.
It's like core-ing out the goody bits from an otherwise bland pint of ice cream. Who would ever do such a disgusting and selfish thing? :-0
Some of these sound just as made-up as a lot of Western dining "rules." Maybe someone more familiar with the culture can say whether or not these are true faux pas in an everyday ramen shop or similar.
No one is going to get mad at you for violating these, but they will judge you. If you're trying to get along with a person from a proper Japanese family, you'll fail unless you know all of these and more. For example, placing bowls/plates on the table too hard, or not trying hard enough to pay the bill, not serving others, pouring your own drink...the list goes on and on. Most people think these things are silly, but some absolutely do not and will treat you accordingly if you're making these mistakes. Whether or not you care is up to you and the situation. This is all also true in almost every other culture, by the way.
They’re not fake but some are not followed by everyone outside of formal situations
I always do the splinter thing. I thought that was normal. If the place has disposable chopsticks it isn't the sort of place etiquette matters is it?
Even expensive restaurants in Japan use disposable chopsticks. And you only get splinters on your chopsticks because you're rubbing them in your hands and making pieces break off.
In all my decades of using chopsticks, I've never had a splinter poke me. But I've seen people rub their chopsticks then complain about splinters.
I was really confused by this because I've spent about 6 months of my life in Tokyo and got very very very few disposable chopsticks at restaurants a tier above, like, shokken ramen shops.
But the internet informs me that the composite chopsticks that I am used to seeing went away during covid and now disposable wooden chopsticks are the norm.
I don't exactly know the system for which restaurants pull out of the disposable chopsticks but I think that for example "normal" tempura, katsudon, or like soba restaurants will tend to be those.
I almost associate the cheapo reusable plastic chopsticks with some food courts or Matsuya at this point.
There are the ones that are partly rounded and only attached for a cm or so at the top. They are fine. Then there are the square ones that are attached for half or more of the length and don't always break apart cleanly. They have never poked me, but they have shed bits into my food before that I had to pick out. I will stop cleaning up the ones that don't actually need it. I didn't realize it was offensive.
he he... is that the equivalent of when I was a kid we differentiated by "drive-in", "paper-napkin restaurant" and "cloth-napkin restaurant" in order of how much trouble you would be in if you embarrassed your parents.
Most of these are common sense. As a tourist foreigner, you also aren't expected to know all the customs but it's appreciated when you try. The one about which direction to NOT point the chopsticks in was new to me. If you just watch what other people are doing, then try to do the same thing, you're probably on the right track.
Related to eating, one pro-tip I got from a local is that when you're ready to close your tab or get your check at a bar or restaurant, you can make a small X with your index fingers.
Really useful in a busy bar!
> Most of these are common sense.
A lot of them are not common sense at all. Even the 'serious' ones require cultural knowledge to understand. Only a subset of the rest would be un-ideal across cultures, which is what I would use to measure 'common sense'.
It's like how in some asian cultures it's rude to bring the bowl closer to you by lifting it off the table, and in others it's the opposite. And of course there's some just-so story for why, that seems to make sense if you don't know about the opposing just-so story.
Things like that aren't what I'd call common sense.
A bunch of the common sense ones, like not pointing at someone with your ustensiles, are the same in western etiquette.
It’s not western etiquette and makes no sense to me
Using your fork, knife, or spoon to point at a person is absolutely considered rude. Gesturing with utensils likewise (because you can shower others with cast off detritus.)
A quick Google search will turn up hundreds of results corroborating this.
Or just consider the “asshole dinner guest” trope that appears in so many TV shows and movies. They will always be talking too loudly and gesticulating/pointing with their cutlery.
1. I have seen Japanese people do approximately half of the things on the list.
2. The two listed as "serious" are related to Japanese funerary rites, and so are clearly culturally specific.
3. Several of the things listed are perfectly acceptable in other chopstick-using cultures. Many are also perfectly acceptable to do with a fork and/or knife in cultures that use forks and knives. I think I would go so far as to say that there is not a single thing on there for which it would be widely considered rude to do in all cultures.
> 1. I have seen Japanese people do approximately half of the things on the list.
There are people in Japan who are rude or who do not have as good manners or etiquette when they are eating alone!
If everyone followed all manners all the times they wouldn't really be encoded woould they?
Both of the serious ones are not specific to Japan, I got told off in China for standing chopsticks up in rice. I suspect anywhere with a significant Buddhist population will have the same taboo.
> The one about which direction to NOT point the chopsticks in was new to me.
I suspect it mostly affects left handed people.
> To turn the chopsticks around when serving food so that the tips of the chopsticks that have touched one’s mouth do not touch the food.
Huh, this is something that I did consistently, believing it to be good etiquette.
Somewhere on the page they mentioned that there are separate serving chopsticks. Turning the eating chopsticks around is probably more normal when there aren't separate ones.
こすり箸 Kosuribashi:
To rub waribashi (disposable chopsticks) together to remove splinters.
> I don't know about Japan
It is definitely not appropriate. If you break the chop sticks and use them correctly your fingers will never touch the surface where there are splinters.
Sandpaper and dremel aren't on the forbidden list yet.
This raises the question of what are the funeral rites.
They piece through the ashes of a cremation and pass them between each other?
I know the modern style of conveyor belt cremation is a bit impersonal.
It’ll take me a while to process this.
I once see someone's chopsticks taken away from them and replaced with a knife and fork. I've always wondered what they did wrong. Now I see they probably covered half this list. Haha
Chobukubashi would make being left-handed decidedly annoying.
On the other hand (so to speak), European style (fork stays in left hand) is great for left-handers.
Highly instructive, and some quite surprising to me as a gaijin.
> To take the tips of the chopsticks in one’s mouth.
Sometimes I'm having a hard time avoiding that. Apparently I need more practice.
I think that one refers to doing so when there is no food on the chopsticks. Picture tapping the chopsticks against your lips to show you’re thinking, if conversing while eating. The overarching rule being that you should put the chopsticks down whenever you’re not in the middle of picking up/moving food with them.
(Unless you want to come off as imitating a Rakugo storyteller. If you do, then go ahead and use them as a talking prop. But maybe make it clear that you’re not eating with those ones, so people don’t worry you’ll flick sauce at them!)
Always interesting to see the analogs of island vs continental culture when comparing UK <-> America and Japan <-> China. Seems like islanders, due to their reliance on trade, naturally get specialized and autistic about their craft so they can have a comparative advantage, and their obsessions carry over into stuffy traditional practices.
>Always interesting to see the analogs of island vs continental culture when comparing UK <-> America and Japan <-> China.
when America was settled/founded by Britains, etiquette had not been standardized in GB either so the differences are due to parallel development, not island vs continent. That probably holds even more for differences between Japan and China.
I counter with the American swap-the-fork-hand-after-you-cut thing. Diabolical.
As an American, I don't think I have ever seen anyone do this.
It's like you've never met someone who's left handed
Really? You hold the fork with your dominant hand, and cut with your non-dominant hand?
Yes. For the record, Americans also don't wear their shoes indoors, except for maybe some people in extremely dry climates.
Don't all younger Americans do this? Cutting food and pushing it onto the fork requires less dexterity than conveying it to one's mouth. I know Boomers who put down their knives after each cut (never using them to push) and swap their fork around before using it tines-down, and I think it's more comically affected than the tea–pinky thing.
Really? You don't know any Naval Academy graduates then.
It's considered polite in American culture.
That’s just mental. Does my head in when I see it.
American raised by a Brit here, and I was literally just doing this during lunch out. I consider the upside down fork just plain torture.
Would you mind sharing your insight? I'd be interested to hear!
What stuffy traditional practices does the UK have?
I did this once and was scolded by my date:
!!! (Serious) To stand chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice. This is taboo, as it is the way rice is presented as a Buddhist funeral offering.
What a coincidence... I was just in my backyard shed playing with my robot chopstick. https://youtu.be/BhBXliscj0I
> 移り箸 Utsuribashi (also known as 渡り箸 wataribashi)
> To keep putting the chopsticks into the same side dishes. It is proper etiquette to first eat rice, move on to eat from a side dish, eat rice again, and then eat from a different side dish.
So keto itself is a faux pas?
> 返し箸 Kaeshibashi (also known as 逆さ箸 sakasabashi)
> To turn the chopsticks around when serving food so that the tips of the chopsticks that have touched one’s mouth do not touch the food.
Ewww. I’d rather be rude than share germs.
>> To turn the chopsticks around when serving food so that the tips of the chopsticks that have touched one’s mouth do not touch the food.
> Ewww. I’d rather be rude than share germs.
I think this means you should use something other than your chopsticks to share food, and not just assume that "the back of my chopsticks are germ-free, I'll use that"
You will quickly learn the first one because if you keep eating the delicious side dishes you will be only left with large amounts of bland rice to eat last.
It would be pretty irritating if someone in your dinner party ate the lion's share of the more flavorful food and left the rice for everyone else.
Keto diet doesn’t exist in Japanese cuisine. If you’re going to a keto friendly place, it’s something trendy and contemporary so this traditional advice obviously doesn’t apply. It is not a faux-pas to eat non traditional / non Japanese cuisine.
Keto diet doesn’t exist in western cuisine either. It’s a niche thing in both places, and both places have specific single dishes without carbs.
Glad to know I haven’t picked up any seriously bad habits, but how the heck do you keep the chopsticks aligned without tapping them somewhere?
Most of these seem related to health/sanitary practices/being considerate more than anything. Just avoiding contaminating what others are going to eat with your own utensils is an easy way to describe several of them.
You can just slide them with your fingers, even one handed, and it's not like they need to be perfectly aligned.
But, yeah, I tap them to align them all the time, have seen Japanese people do it day in and day out. I've even done it in some fine dining places in Japan. No one yelled at me, but I am a gaijin, so...
Fascinating culture and raises numerous questions arising from my subsequent confusion:
1. > 返し箸 Kaeshibashi (also known as 逆さ箸 sakasabashi)
> To turn the chopsticks around when serving food so that the tips of the chopsticks that have touched one’s mouth do not touch the food.
Does this mean it is preferable to use the tips that may have touched mouth to then serve more food? Or is this considered fine because it's also taboo to touch the tips to your mouth? (which only a BARBARIAN would do!)
2. > こすり箸 Kosuribashi
> To rub waribashi (disposable chopsticks) together to remove splinters.
Just proceed to eat some splinters, then? What is the good etiquette way to handle low quality el-cheapo chopsticks?
---
I have been guilty of the above as well as:
Chigiribashi - Hold one chopstick in each hand and use them like a knife and fork to tear or cut food into smaller pieces.
Soroebashi - Hold chopsticks together and tap them on a dish or the top of the table to align the tips.
Namidabashi - Allow sauce or soup to drip from the tips of the chopsticks when eating. Namida means “tears.”
Nigiribashi - Grip both chopsticks in a fist.
Neburibashi - Lick the chopsticks.
Hashibashi - Place the chopsticks like a bridge across the top of a dish to show one is finished. Chopsticks should be placed on the hashioki (chopstick rest).
Furibashi - Shake off soup, sauce, or small bits of food from the tips of the chopsticks.
Mogibashi - Bite off and eat grains of rice that are stuck to the chopsticks.
Yokobashi - Line the chopsticks up together and use them like a spoon to scoop up food.
.. growing up my mom used to say, "What are you, raised by wolves!?" .. apparently, yes!
> Kaeshibashi
The preference is to use a separate pair of communal chopsticks that is not used directly for eating.
> Kosuribashi
I have heard that this one is because it's considered to be an insult implying that the chopsticks are low-quality. (That said, if your chopsticks are indeed low-quality, then avoiding splinters is probably preferable to then visibly plucking splinters out of your fingers.)
> Just proceed to eat some splinters, then? What is the good etiquette way to handle low quality el-cheapo chopsticks?
Well first of all the chopsticks are joined at the non-eating end, typically. So the splinters would be bothering your fingers more than anything.
It's rude because it insults the host, in a way. Anywhere that would care about you doing it should not be giving you the cheap chopsticks in the first place. If you're in a place that gives you them, they probably don't care about you doing it.
There are steel chopsticks (though not really common <-- only in Korea).
The metal chopsticks are pretty much only get used in Korea. The shape and material of the chopsticks varies by country so you can make a good guess as to where someone is from based on which chopsticks they use.
I think it's important to point out that these are good manners for eating with Japanese people, not good manners for eating with chopsticks. There is no requirement to emulate Japanese eating manners if you're not in Japan and not anywhere near a person raised in Japanese cultur. There are other cultures that use chopsticks that do not necessarily have these manners.
This is definitely true - but some of these are fairly universal, or at least that is my understanding. I believe the 'no sticking chopsticks upright in rice' one is shared between Japan, Korea, China, etc. for example - it looks like funerary incense/joss sticks in all three due to the shared aspects of their cultures, for example.
The disposable wooden chopsticks in Japan don’t splinter (they’re higher quality and cost more than the ones we have in the US).
That’s why you don’t need to rub to get rid of splinters.
The disposable wooden chopsticks in Japan don’t splinter
If that was always true, there wouldn't be a word for it.
I've been given some pretty gnarly chopsticks at roadside places outside the main metropolitan areas.
Well that certainly depends on the establishment. I’ve picked out plenty of splinters here in Japan.
Some of these I’ve been told are taboos in the opposite way. For example, the one about serving or taking food from the opposite end of the chopsticks, I was told, is polite. But here they say it is taboo. Maybe they meant it’s taboo not to do that?
Yes, it’s weirdly ambiguous. But even that is performative, as you’re still using an unsanitary part - the part that has touched your hand vs the part that has touched your lips.
Did you also play Thrice today? (This was one of the daily questions.)
I have always wondered when I used the pair of chopsticks to push food on my fork, if there was a name for my type.
I married an Asian woman I met at work. Our boss called me in to ask if I was serious about marrying her and I said yes. He asked if I wanted any advice and I sincerely answered that I did. Our marriage was necessarily disruptive because it meant that she would also defect. That would cause problems up and down the management chain. His advice was for me to learn how to use chopsticks. that’s it. Nothing else.
I spent months learning how to use them properly in secret and finally deployed my skills when I thought I was pretty good. She didn’t notice. I then realized she almost always used a fork. In high school and college their meals were always served hastily and the students always brought a fork or spoon. they would eat standing up and had maybe five minutes to get the job done. No time for chopsticks.
When her parents came out to visit us after we got married I frantically asked her advice about good chopstick etiquette. I very much did not wish to cause her to lose face. She didn’t give a flying fuck. I honestly think I married one of the freest spirits in Asia, which is not necessarily a compliment.
She said I was doing fine and literally refused to give me any feedback at all, incorrectly claiming she wasn’t even that good. In fact, I think she only started to resume using chopsticks because I ended up finding them useful and now far prefer them to silverware.
I ended up having to learn most of the customs by watching people in restaurants. Just learning how to set them down right took additional months because I noticed far too late that they set their chopsticks down in a sort of V shape which is much harder than one might expect. Also, I am left-handed, but taught myself to do it right handed on the theory of that would also help me not lose face in front of the in-laws. It turns out they are also highly unconventional and probably didn’t care about my chopstick use one way or the other.
When we had kids, I would learn that Asian children who don’t learn to use chopsticks represent another way to lose face. It results in titanic power struggles within the family and makes everyone miserable. It’s a little like forcing kids here in the USA to eat their vegetables. By this time I had learned of her disinterest, so neither of us bothered to teach them. All of our children naturally picked it up with no apparent effort, including one who is very severely developmentally disabled.
I feel like a lot of this is culture and class specific. I can't speak for Japan, but in China there are at least as many different levels of chopstick-using skill as anywhere in the west. Kids and elderly who can't pick up a peanut or a cherry tomato, people who find it entirely unproblematic to stab a slippery dumpling, people who think it's stupid to waste time trying to get fried rice into your mouth with chopsticks and just grab a spoon instead, people who dredge their way through the hotpot to find the treat they're looking for...
I often get the sense that foreigners getting stressed about (or feeling pride in) how well they use chopsticks is a weird kind of orientalism. Because, like, who cares if someone shows up in a western restaurant and uses a spoon instead of knife to saw through something, or grabs a big hunk with a fork and takes a bite, leaving the rest on the fork? Maybe you wouldn't do it if you were having dinner with the queen, but any other context nobody cares. I'm sure parents still try to teach their kids to eat polite way, and maybe even feel a bit embarrassed if their kids show themselves to be less well-behaved than the neighbors', but that's a universal thing so, eh.
lol describing me as an Orientalist will amuse my family to no end but you made some cogent observations. All I can say is: face is a big thing in China. I respect my in-laws hugely. I did not want them to lose face nor to be made to feel uncomfortable on my behalf if I could help it. As far as I can tell Orientalism and pride had nothing to do with it. Or maybe you’re right and I am a deeply closeted chiaboo. I’ll watch some anime or whatever and get right back to you.
I love how they have words for the different kinds of rule breaking. Truly civilized people.
More like oppressed people by all those bs rules.
My partner and I share everything we eat. I think we have passed food between chopsticks before. What's the "proper" way to do this? Just reach in to the other bowl?
Also wondering how many of these apply in a Chinese setting or any other chopstick culture. Are there a different set of taboos?
> To place one’s mouth against the side of a dish and push food in with the chopsticks.
I've seen people eat noodles and broth (e.g., ramen) like that a million times? What am I missing? How do you properly eat noodles and broth?
It's not a taboo, it's just not considered good manners in formal contexts.
But it's fast and efficient, which is why people do it anyway.
So how does one eat ramen-like dishes in formal contexts?
They don't. Ramen is a poor-persons-food and probably not being served at formal banquets.
Slurp the noodles and drink the broth?
That taboo is simply wrong in many contexts. Watch Tampopo after reading this and it can correct for a lot.
I lived in Japan for nearly 6 years and found that concern for faux pas such as these for hashi (chopsticks) are way way overblown. I used at least one thousand disposable pairs of chopsticks in Japan and never had the desire to smooth them -- they are higher quality than Panda Express offerings. I knew about this "taboo" prior to arrival and it was simply irrelevant. Avoid the obvious symbolic references to makura gohan (bowl of rice offering to the deceased) at the end of your meal and you are probably golden. If you have kids in Japan, gaijin passing food with chopsticks to their children in a restaurant is going to be seen in a neutral or even sympathetic light. The Japanese may silently judge but they rarely sneer or harass. If you spend a lot of time with modern Japanese families you might be surprised to discover Western stereotypes of Japanese taboos are sometimes outdated and even incorrect. They are very aware that foreigners will not understand all of their customs, and many of those customs have decreasing importance as their culture evolves.
Passing food by placing it directly on someone else's plate or bowl is fine. The taboo is specifically about two people holding onto the same thing at the same tine with chopsticks, the way cremated bone fragments are placed into the urn at kotsuage.
Other than that, I agree. It's kind of like trying to apply Emily Post's etiquette to TV dinners: many of these "rules" would be viewed as prissy by Japanese and some (eg. giving your miso soup a swirl with your chopsticks before drinking) are very, very commonly ignored.
>holding onto the same thing at the same tine
i see what you did there
The main one for me is not putting your chopsticks on top of the bowl rim or putting the chopsticks sticking up from the rice. Those are both intuitive natural actions for me. In the US I rarely see chopstick rests so I'm always wonderting what to do with them when I'm not using them.
I'm curious for a native's opinion on how important these are. The etiquette I was taught growing up in the US is a mix of:
- several things that are often quoted as good etiquette but nobody follows (elbows off the table, correct order of dishes)
- lots of things that are customary but nobody cares if you don't follow it (napkin on lap, placement of silverware)
- only a few things that actually matter and would be considered rude by normal people (don't touch shared food with used silverware, keep your mouth closed while chewing)
Native here. I'd say only about 6 out of the 47 listed actually matter (Awasebashi, Urabashi, Kamibashi, Jikabashi, Tatebashi, and Neburibashi).
Most of these are only for formal settings. Honestly, I haven't even heard of some of them. Aside from Tatebashi (sticking chopsticks in rice), they’re mostly avoided for hygiene reasons. As for Nigiribashi (clutching them in a fist), it just looks a bit strange for an adult to do.
People told me to avoid placing chopsticks upwards in a bowl before I even went to Japan so that is the only one I’d keep in mind.
Given how many of these are clever tricks that I learned from seeing Japanese people eat, like aligning the chopsticks quickly in a plate or cleaning waribashi from splinters by rubbing them together, I’d not take all of these seriously, but it’s cool to know nonetheless.
Honestly, I don't even really see 'don't touch shared food with used silverware' followed if a place doesn't provide specific serving utensils.
Yeah it's a pretty flexible rule, but it's at least something to think about, unlike a lot of other "rules" that you're allowed to completely disregard for your entire life. I probably was too strict in describing that last bullet point.
Holy cow! I thought there was going to be a list of 8 of them... There's like 40!
And I thought the Inuit had a lot of words for snow.
I wonder how many of these words a typical Japanese person can list off the top of their head.
is there a word for using them as hairsticks?
"kawai"
> こすり箸 Kosuribashi
> To rub waribashi (disposable chopsticks) together to remove splinters.
Stopped reading there. If you're handing me crappy chopsticks to eat with I am rubbing them together first.
Exactly, too many times have i heard from some snob not to rub them, who later had to pull a splinter out of their finger.
Namidabashi and Furibashi seem like a contradiction
If they serve me slop with only a few good bits, I'm doing saguribashi.
as a lifelong chopstick user, this article is for one of those fault finding crazies.
hold the chopstick however you like. so long as you don’t drop things unintentionally it’s fine.