Hacker News

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.

There's equally complex dining and utensils etiquette in Western culture but it's largely omitted (or even unknown) on daily basis.

I assume this is one of those cases where if you're in the culture, you'll know which rules you're allowed to break (and when) vs if you're on the outside it's easiest to just follow all the rules all the time.

Reminds me of an episode on youtube of How The British Upper Class Live | Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over where the presenter eats her eggs "wrong", much to the dismay of her posh host who tells her (in his subtle British way) that she should "sort that out".

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.

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...

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 mean... I've consistently seen people chewing with their mouth open, talking while chewing, biting their fork, and so many others, just in occidental places, and it didn't seem to bother anyone but me. so, why would it be different in Japan?

I see lots of people do things that are commonly written off as rude too. I don't know if there is much of a monoculture around what's rude or not, if people don't care (then is it truly rude?), or maybe the writings like this are simply outdated.

You also see plenty of americans put their elbows on the table.

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.

Don’t go to Chinese food with a drummer. It’s just maddening.

It actually is tradition

I'm betting Kuwaebashi covers that.

> 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?

waruburashi

I think it's number 9 in the list

sacrilegious lol

> 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.

I'm curious about Hashibashi as well. I've seen lots of Japanese people doing it, and now I'm worried I look like a total poser from copying them.

I think you’re supposed to eat fried rice with a spoon :)

Yokobashi bros! Fist bump.

Sheeet, seen quite a few people do it (not sure if Japanese or another culture) and just ingrained it as proper (just like slurping is in Japan). Gotta rethink that, lol.

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”.

I had a friend from Korea who thought it wasn't necessary/was improper to rub chopsticks together. This wasn't a matter of offending the restaurant, since we were eating in a university cafeteria.

I always rub mine together, but I suppose it would be interesting to know if you didn't, how often would something bad happen? Is it more likely to hurt your mouth or your fingers?

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..."

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.

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..

Technically in the USA: It is impolite to begin eating without first washing your hands, rest your elbows on the table, chew with your mouth open, double dip in shared dishes, leave your napkin on the table, and also all sorts of rules about which spoon to use when. None of these rules are followed by your average American and nobody really cares, I imagine it's similar to these.

That's like avoiding the West because of fancy cutlery rules. Japanese people are not as thin-skinned as lists like these lead you to believe.

And that's totally fine :)

> 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.

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.

    when you're ready to close your tab, you can make a small X with your index fingers

> The one about which direction to NOT point the chopsticks in was new to me.

I suspect it mostly affects left handed people.

Maybe it means that you're digging up food that is under other food?

Kinda sad for me to know this because one of my favorite things about chopsticks is their precision. I can pick exactly the piece of food I feel like eating in the next moment. This makes it sound like I'm not supposed to be picky.

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

The chopstick against the knuckle doesn’t work for me I use the fingertip.

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.

> 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.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who gets annoyed by this.

I was once at a table with someone who was eating tomato soup by putting the spoon into their mouth, bitting it, and then pulling the spoon out. I was losing my mind listening to it.

Dip, ting, dip, ting. Dip, OUCH!.

They chipped their tooth. They chipped a tooth eating tomato soup.

Biting a fork is a huge pet peeve of mine.

Cringe?

Except a bunch of those diagrams are showing the wrong thing, but yeah, other than that it's good.

>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.

Would you mind sharing your insight? I'd be interested to hear!

What stuffy traditional practices does the UK have?

It would also be completely inappropriate if you did that with a fork or a knife.

On the other hand (so to speak), European style (fork stays in left hand) is great for left-handers.

>> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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!)

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...

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.

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.

More like oppressed people by all those bs rules.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I also understand that in the US it is the etiquette to cut your food up all at once, and then put the knife down, and then move your fork to your right hand, and then eat all the pieces using just the fork.

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.

Sure, and American table manners are the cause of rising fascism, there's a whole Wikipedia article on all their rules. [1] They're more worried about elbows on the table than the increase in authoritarianism.

See, I can make up dumb shit too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_manners_in_North_America

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.

"kawai"

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.

Nice that you discovered LLM, welcome.

But next time, keep your findings for a thread related to the topic of LLM wonders, not when it's unrelated, such as chopsticks.