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?
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'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...
No, that is actually the polite and proper way to eat.
I’m downvoted but it’s correct lol. What’s with HN and Japan topics? The only difference is how animated it’s eaten, if you’re shoveling like a slob, it is not polite. But the “shoveling” and bringing it to your mouth are absolutely correct.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..."
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
>> 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"
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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)
Of these several dozen "rules" for chopsticks, how many actually fall into the last category of things that actually matter?
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.
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.
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?
Phew, I'm glad "inserting them into your nostrils and braying like a walrus" isn't on the list.
I think it's number 9 in the list
waruburashi
sacrilegious lol
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'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...
No, that is actually the polite and proper way to eat.
I’m downvoted but it’s correct lol. What’s with HN and Japan topics? The only difference is how animated it’s eaten, if you’re shoveling like a slob, it is not polite. But the “shoveling” and bringing it to your mouth are absolutely correct.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
Wow you used all the Japanese words, I bow to you sensei
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.
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.
> The one about which direction to NOT point the chopsticks in was new to me.
I suspect it mostly affects left handed people.
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.
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 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.
> 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.
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?
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.
> 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"
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.
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...
What a coincidence... I was just in my backyard shed playing with my robot chopstick. https://youtu.be/BhBXliscj0I
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 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.
Well that certainly depends on the establishment. I’ve picked out plenty of splinters here in Japan.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Really? You don't know any Naval Academy graduates then.
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.
What stuffy traditional practices does the UK have?
Would you mind sharing your insight? I'd be interested to hear!
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:
Of these several dozen "rules" for chopsticks, how many actually fall into the last category of things that actually matter?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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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